January 4th - 6th
Thirty-two thousand feet safely above the southern most tip of Sweden, Lieve Petersen booted up a 2005 Mac PowerBook belonging to none other than the acclaimed financial journalist Mikael Blomkvist. She smiled. The media was still in a frenzy over the sudden death of the PowerBook's former owner. The whole thing had been so easy it was almost disappointing. She have thought such an esteemed journalist ragtag investigator such as Blomkvist would have noticed the little brown parcel Petersen had left behind after taking the laptop.
It had been pure luck that Blomkvist had walked into the apartment when he did. Petersen only half expected him to get back before time was up. She had set the timer to go off after fifteen minutes after she had ransacked the apartment, not really caring whether or not Blomkvist got there or not; the laptop was the key aspect.
But Petersen had made a grave error. She had forgotten all about his tech savvy Lisbeth Salander. It came as a complete to see Salander sliding down the center of the escalators at T-Central just as she had slipped Blomkvist's laptop back into her bag. Petersen was nearly convinced the jig was up. Yet Salander had passed within two feet of her on the train three times but had never cast a second glance at her. She had made it all the way to Bromma-Stockholm, disembarking the train right in front of Salander, still going completely unnoticed.
Petersen looked out into the night through a first class window. Approaching from below were the Netherlands. After that came Belgium.
Over the course of the night, Salander was roused from bed several times. Her nose had started bleeding again and completely soaked through the cloth she placed over her pillows. A pair of cotton balls up the nose had solved the problem nicely and she went back to bed. An hour later a splitting headache erupted that was bad enough for her to ponder whether or not to go to the ER for the briefest of moments. With twice the recommended dose of ibuprofen from her sparse medicine cabinet the headache was reduced to a mild pulse and the thought of hospital treatment forgotten. It wasn't until her nose had managed to soak through an additional four pairs of cotton balls that she said fuck it, preferring to just hold a ratty shirt up to her nose and mercilessly beat the keys on her laptop from the safety of her room as the sun began to rise.
At half past three in the afternoon Salander had still not come out the master and Blomkvist was becoming slightly worried. Several times that night he could here her bumping around in the bathroom before padding back to her bedroom. He had also awoken to find small droplets of dried blood leading from the entrance hall to the bathroom.
He was slightly relieved to find that while her laptop was in her room, the charger was not. So it became a sort of waiting game for Blomkvist. Eventually she would come out of hiding to recharge her computer battery.
Sometime an hour or so later keys began to rattle in the door.
"Lis-"
Miriam Wu caught sight of Blomkvist and instantly felt embarrassed. "Hi."
"Hi." Blomkvist stoically replied.
"Is Lisbeth around?"
"Bedroom." Mimmi relaxed.
Miriam didn't thank him, just breezed right past him. Blomkvist was not prepared by the very high-pitched shriek that she emitted the moment she opened Salander's door.
"What the FUCK happened to your face?"
"I don't want to talk about it." Came Salander's mumbled reply.
"Come off of it. Your nose looks like an eggplant." Mimmi plopped herself down on the edge of the bed on the opposite side of Salander, staring at the screen. It looked like she had gotten back into her strange math hobby.
"I got kicked in the face."
"By who?"
"A size 13 men's boot."
Mimmi held one of the old shirts Salander had been using. "There's a lot of blood here." Lisbeth just shrugged and lit a cigarette. Almost most involuntarily, Mimmi reached out to touch her nose but her handed was quickly batted away by Lisbeth's.
"You should really go to a hospital for that."
"The bleeding's stop so I don't see the point."
"Umm. The fact that your nose it completely bent out of shape. Can you even breathe?"
Salander responded by shutting her laptop and slidding out of bed, pulling on a shirt with the widest shoulders she could find before padding quietly out of the bedroom, Mimmi right on her heels. Blomkvist was lounging on the couch reading the front page of the newspaper and didn't try to hide his flinch when he saw her.
Salander's nose had been almost flattened against her face, giving Blomkvist the feeling that even the most skilled surgical hands probably couldn't completely right the damage done. Her face been scratched like hell and she had a noticeable limp in her left leg. He would make sure to ask her what in the hell she had gotten into once Wu left.
Lisbeth walked into the kitchen, hoisting herself up onto the counter. She offered a cigarette to Mimmi before throwing the rest of the pack at Blomkvist while he was looking in the opposite direction. It didn't even manage to fly half the distance.
"When are you going back to Paris?"
"I leave on the eight pm flight tonight out of Bromma." Salander's eyes flashed briefly but whatever emotion they showed was unreadable.
She took a long drag off her cigarette, asking nonchalantly when her next break was.
"Whenever you feel like dragging your ass down to Paris. I'm completely over all the security regulations between here and there."
"You think a tatted up freak like me would have an easier time?"
"Just pull some rings out of your face and no one will give you a second glance."
"I would still fail the metal detectors." She said, tapping her head where a steel plate had been embedded last April. Drumming her fingers on the coffee maker, she used Blomkvist's cold morning cup of coffee for an ashtray. Salander found that smoking had little substance to it without the use of her nose.
When it was clear Lisbeth wouldn't go on, Mimmi gave her an apologetic look before walking back towards the bedroom. There she retrieved the silk dragon robe that had been hanging from the doorframe and her spare sets of clothes. Salander hopped down from the counter, following her into the entrance hall where she had managed to somehow pack up all seven sets of shoes into a neat little carrying box. Only Mimmi.
Salander shut the door behind her as she and Mimmi stepped out into the hall.
"I'll bite; why is Mikael Blomkvist in your apartment after his exploded?"
"Because his exploded." Salander answered bluntly. "He's…a friend."
"Like I'm your friend, right?"
"He's saved my ass so many times I'm still indebted to him." Salander shrugged, not quite answering the question. It wasn't something she could answer in a concise manner so she chose to avoid it.
Mimmi looked back at Salander as she leaned back against the front door before walking up and gently brushing her lips against Lisbeth's.
"I'm still not in love with you."
"Keep it that way and we won't have any problems."
Mimmi waved as she walked down the stairs and Salander wondered if a trip to Paris would be such a bad thing. Now she was stuck alone with Blomkvist. She promised herself the week before she had no feelings left for him. Now it was time put that promise to the test.
She sat down on the stairs and thought about all the Internet hits she had been tracking from Blomkvist's computer. A few seemed to come from the ocean so Salander reasonably deducted that who ever had blown up Mikael's apartment had been on the train with her all the way to Bromma-Stockholm before flying out. Salander could not think of anyone suspicious she had seen on the train at Medborgplasten that had gotten off at Bromma. The fact that Salander didn't have a reliable profile to go off of disturbed her and a little voice at the back of her mind hoped whoever it was would come back for round two. This time, Salander would win.
The doorframe groaned where it had been split the night before when Salander slipped back into the apartment. Blomkvist gave for a questioning look that she chose to ignore before grabbing her wallet from her room and her car keys off the kitchen counter. She left her pack of cigarettes on the coffee table but emptied her ashtray into the garbage chute as she took the elevator down to her garage. The right mirror of her bike had broken off when the bike fell, the passenger foot peg bent in the opposite direction. The car was freezing when she climbed in so she lit a cigarette while waiting for it to heat up before backing out onto Fiskargatan.
Bits of salt and sand were clinging from the mud flaps of her car by the time she had parked in front of the seven eleven a block from Millennium. In it she grabbed two large coffees, a bag of coffee grounds, milk, a box of cheap thumbtacks, and three comprehensive maps of central and northern Europe. The cashier overcharged for the coffees and didn't look the least apologetic. The temperature had improved greatly since new years, now hovering at about five below and turning the roads to salty slush. She was supposed to visit Palmgren today.
Blomkvist was standing in the garage looking at her bike. Salander resisted the urge to slap him when he picked up the broken mirror. She slammed the car door forcefully behind her, snatching the broken mirror out of his hand.
"Did you crash your bike before or after you had your nose smashed flat with a size 13 boot?"
"Here are the rules. Leave all forms of transportation alone unless you ask. Don't play with my computer or even look at it. Don't read through open mail or legal papers. Nod. Now."
When he did she have him a crooked non-smile and handed him a coffee before hobbling away to the elevator. She sipped hers, making a face when she realized she had grabbed his. Mikael came to the same conclusion and they awkwardly swapped cups as the elevator opened onto her floor.
Salander immediately got to work, dropping her coffee onto the kitchen table and spreading out a map covering the countries to the southwest of Sweden. Between eleven pm the previous night and half an hour ago Mikael's laptop had accessed public Wi-Fi ports seven times. Blomkvist watched intently as she stuck pins across a mini-map of Brussels.
"When I was with Modig and Bubble they said that the detonator was a Belgian pre-paid."
Salander's head snapped up. "What carrier?"
"Proximal or something like that."
"About three hours ago your laptop was on at a McDonald's across from the mobile store Proximus." Salander pounded into the keys furiously. "I'll see if I can cross reference anyone that's paid repeat visits to the store in the last month."
Blomkvist nodded, finishing the last of his coffee before throwing it down the garbage chute outside of Salander's apartment. When he came back she was in the main police server, skimming through recent evidence logs. There were only five entries in the entire database after the server had been reformatted. Office Jan Bublanski had logged one cell phone into evidence, but it was noted it had been too damaged to recover a serial number. The phone looked to be several years old and instantly Salander cancelled the cross-reference. It wouldn't be of any use if the phone was several years old.
The computer chirped. "They're on again." She looked at the address. "Shit."
"What?"
"Train station in Amsterdam."
The laptop went offline again. "The police bulletin board just posted Figuerola's memorial service for tomorrow at ten. Bubble is also hounding Modig with his sorrows about you not answering emails but the email he sent is the same as the bulletin so it doesn't really matter if you reply or not. He also wants to get in touch with you again regarding your exact whereabouts on New Years but really wants to pester you about what they didn't find in your apartment when they were picking through it."
"That was quick."
"There wasn't much of her left so I imagine that sped up the funeral arrangement process somewhat."
Blomkvist glared at her bare, bruised shoulders. "That's not what I meant. I mean Bublanski and Modig seem to have a few ideas of what happened that aren't complete crap. They actually seemed a lot more collected when I went to see them yesterday morning."
"I have more than they do. All they have is a burnt up phone while I have your virtual hard drive being traced around Europe." She looked up at him from her window seat. "So are you going or not?"
"I have nothing to wear." He motioned to his pair of jeans and heavy sweater. "I've been stuck in this for the last three days."
"If I give you six thousand krona will you go away for a few hours?"
"Trying to get rid of me?"
"No I'm going to go see Palmgren and Mimmi took the spare key." Blomkvist threw his hands up in exasperation before walking into the bathroom and turning on the shower. Salander decided she would drop him off at AB Nordiska on the other side of the Riddarfjärden before doubling back towards Ersta. She hoped it would keep him busy while she dropped in on Palmgren for his weekly annihilation at chess.
He walked out of the bathroom a half hour later, his hair still glistening and ruffled. She handed him six thousand krona and told him to spend as much as he wished. She doubted he would spend more than two.
It was back to raining when they pulled up on Hamngatan. When he stepped out she gunned the car before he could turn around and demand to be taken somewhere less extravagant.
She parked her car on Erstagatan and could see Palmgren reading comfortably inside of the covered porch of the assisted living home. She rapped on the door lightly with a hand, her hood drawn as low as possible over her face. Palmgren was no fool; he could tell she was hiding something and gasped when she finally lowered her hood.
Salander expected no less, but was surprised by the hand that instantly went to the side of her face where the bruising wasn't so bad.
"Just say it."
"What do you think I should say?"
"That I'm the worse case you've ever had to deal with."
"You were never just a case Lisbeth. You are Lisbeth and you are by far the most loyal and interesting of the many children I have fostered over the last thirty years." Palmgren looked at her with a kindness she had never know from any other person. "Do you need any ice for this?"
She shook her head before sitting down on the chair facing Palmgren's, pulling out the familiar wooden chessboard from her satchel. He smiled at his formal ward when she gave him first move, knowing that there would never come a day when he would beat her.
"How is Blomkvist?"
"Alive." She flicked his pawn clear off the table. "How's group living?"
"Terribly boring. I'm the only one here that doesn't need a wheelchair and everyone here sleeps away eighteen hours of the day."
Lisbeth purposely ignored his badly played knight. "I don't see why they force you to stay here. I mean, I do, but you're too self sufficient to be stuck in one of these places."
"If I had another stroke alone, I may not be so fortunate in finding help. No, I think this is the best I can get." She gave him a blank expression; one he knew usually involved plotting. "And don't you dare try to set up a fund to have me moved either. I like most of these old coots when they're conscious."
She quickly took down his queen and rook in back to back moves. "You should try playing with more than just a first intention. Otherwise I'm just going to keep obliterating you." By the twenty-eighth move, Lisbeth had Palmgren pinned down with no way out.
Palmgren leaned back in his chair as Lisbeth packed up the board. "Teleborian is due for court in a few days."
Lisbeth said nothing.
"Are you going to testify?"
"No."
"Well I can't say I expected you to say yes."
"Are you?"
"I may drop in. I want to watch the bastard squirm. He's not getting off lightly with the charges they've put to him in any case." Lisbeth nodded. She remembered the look on his face at her trial when Bublanski had escorted him out in handcuffs. Nine thousand kiddie porn pictures later he would be getting a minimum of ten years. She hoped, in vain, that at least two of those would be spent strapped down in a stimulus free environment. Payback's a bitch.
Salander stayed for another hour before leaving. Palmgren was genuinely happy, and that was all that mattered to her.
She found Blomkvist leaning on a railing just outside AB Nordiska with just three bags. She honked at him once to get in, revving the engine threateningly.
"Fucking hell. Why did you have to drop me off there?"
"Did you pick up anything for the funeral?" He held up one bag. Salander nodded. The sun was just above the horizon and everything seemed to have twice the glare as normal. Slussen posed quite the challenge, Salander vowing to buy a pair of cheap sunglasses as soon as possible. Milton Security rose in ominous concrete gray just on the other side of the interchange. She wondered if Armansky had gone home yet.
When they were home, there had been no recent Wi-Fi connections from Blomkvist's computer. It surprised Salander; she had noticed the thief had a very strict routine. Get on some method of transportation, find a fast food joint with Wi-Fi afterwards, log on, read through three Swedish tabloids, log off and repeat a few hours later. It only suggested that this person was on the move again, the idea bothering Salander immensely.
Blomkvist poked his head into the living room, "You don't go for fresh food very often, do you?"
"It just spoils before I eat it, so no." Lisbeth lit a cigarette from her spot on the window seat. The Hacker Republic was sadly empty so she opened up the police server. Nothing interesting. Then as a last resort she looked into Milton. Surprisingly quiet as well. Finishing her cigarette, she decided to go piece her poor Honda back together. Blomkvist was still in the kitchen contemplating if he wanted regular or hawaiian Billy's so she figured she could escape unnoticed if she didn't hobble around too much.
Upon inspection, she found the right mirror was really a lost cause, but she duct taped it back on just to keep it looking legal. The peg just needed a good hammering to put back in place and the tank had a dent she would just have to deal with. Overall, the bike had gotten off pretty good for being dumped on the cobblestones.
She looked at the sledgehammer she had Plague dig up for her. Tomorrow would be perfect to test it out. Hefting it into her arms, she popped the trunk and dropped it in before dragging herself off to the elevator.
Mikael was leaning against the kitchen island when Salander walked past him and tossed her keys on the counter by the coffee maker.
"Hawaiian or regular?"
"Neither. I'm going to bed."
After one last check on the computer there was still nothing. Frustrated, she carried laptop and charger into the bedroom, setting the volume as high as it could go. Any hits while she was asleep she wanted to know about ASAP. She realized her iPhone was also dead and plugged that in, but there was a next to zero chance of anyone calling her. Shit. Annika.
"Mikael!"
His walked in carrying a plate of the Hawaiian. She threw the phone and charger at him. "Annika wants an update. Just hold the top left button to turn it on." With that, Salander stripped and slide into bed. Tomorrow was definitely going to be bloody laundry day. The last thing she heard was the crackling shriek of Annika over the poor speakerphone.
Salander woke to the sound of an electronic ping and a body hitting the floor sometime after seven that morning. A McDonald's in Götberg. Shit. Salander fell back against the pillows as Blomkvist hauled himself up off the floor.
"Erika is back."
"Did you put the phone the charger?"
"Yes. Annika says thank you."
"For what?"
"I haven't the foggiest clue." Lisbeth looked at him, trying to figure out if he was being sarcastic or not. It's too early for this shit.
"There was a hit in Götberg but there's nothing I can really do but keep tracking the computer. At this point I think they may be working their way back to Stockholm now that the news is out that your alive." She stood and across the room, groping blindly in her wardrobe for clothes.
"Are you going to the service?"
"I'll be nearby." She said cryptically. Blomkvist suddenly had an image of Salander sitting in a surveillance van with sensors and wiretaps surrounding the area for the slightest disturbance. Sometimes he wondered why she had only been a researcher for Milton when she so obviously suited for nearly any type of action. She could move without being noticed and was a master of disguise. She reminded him vaguely of a Bond girl, but with a fetish for the color black.
Water started to run in the bathroom adjacent her office. For the longest time he just laid there in bed, listening to the shower and staring at the computer. It had been beeping consistently. Coordinates were popping up all over the screen in new windows, each modest movement. He thought about the risk of using her computer to look them all up.
He eyed the door for no reason, still listening to making sure the water was running. Scooting over to the nightstand, he opened up Google maps and pasted the coordinates in. The entire X2000 line from Götberg to Stockholm was lit up with hits every minute. It was a three-hour ride. Who ever had his laptop was just barely entering the first hour of the journey. Suddenly the water shut off and Blomkvist hurriedly tried to click all the boxes back into their original places on the screen.
The bathroom door did not open for another 20 minutes. When he finally could hear the shuffle of barefeet, he launched himself back to the right side of the bed and grabbed a random book off the floor.
"I didn't know you could understand astrophysics upside down."
He looked up at her crooked smile, amazed at the transformation that had taken place. Copious amounts of makeup turned the fresh bruising to something that looked several weeks old, though there wasn't much to do for the blood vessels that had ruptured in her eye. A few eye drops had given her eyes a more uniform bloodshot appearance that could easily be explained by her computer savvy ways.
"You look good."
She tensed at the compliment. No! You don't accept compliments from Kalle Blomkvist! Ripping open a new package of Marlboros she knelt down in front of the computer.
"You've been on my computer."
Blomkvist didn't deny it. He wasn't surprised that she could tell. He turned the book right side up. What the fuck?
"You can understand all this?" She gave a curt nod before shutting the lid of the laptop.
"You should get dressed. I want to catch the X2000 before the funeral." She gathered up the full ashtrays that were scattered around the room before walking out of the room. The front door slammed and Blomkvist reluctantly rolled out of bed, not looking forward to the memorial service.
Salander's car had just pulled under the garage when he stepped out of the shower. When he was finally dressed Salander was perched on the window seat looking out across to Gamla Stan while nibbling on a donut. There was a box with five left over on the kitchen counter next to a second cup of coffee. He chose a lemon twist and grabbed a coffee before walking into the living room. Salander was back on the laptop.
"What exactly do they do on my computer?"
"Read through your files mostly. Then they go read some Swedish tabloids and newspapers. No email, no social sites, nothing that requires a log on."
"Smart."
"Irritating." She shut the laptop and left it on the window seat. "Let's go. The train gets here in half an hour."
At twenty to nine, the X2000 pulled into Stockholm Central Station. Wearing an olive green retro-punk jacket and laptop tucked safely away into a generic black backpack, Lieve Petersen looked like the average university student coming back to Stockholm after the Christmas hiatus. Her hair had been dyed golden blonde with matching hair extensions put in. She had bought three more cell phones from Proximus with cash, but wasn't in any rush to use them all at once. Petersen liked Stockholm and certainly didn't want to go flying back to Belgium so soon.
Hiking the bag a few inches up her shoulders, she set her sights on the McDonald's across the street from the train station, but nearly stopped dead in her tracks when she caught sight of Lisbeth Salander sitting leisurely on a bench, apparently stuck between people watching and texting. Twice in a row was no co-incidence, yet Petersen could think of no way that Salander could have tracked her to both T-Central and the train station. It was uncanny. But today Lieve felt cocky, deciding she would walk right by Salander before continuing on to across the street. Salander didn't even look up as she passed by.
She was in a damn good mood after that, almost strutting into the McDonalds. Petersen ordered a tall coffee with a large fry, not caring for the strange looks the pimple-faced teen behind the counter gave her. With her order in hand, she slid onto a stood facing out towards Vasagatan and opening up Blomkvist's laptop. At first she just skimmed through 'The Section.' After that she perused the list of names included in Dag Svensson's book. A few names stuck out and she scribbled them down on a napkin. Next she scanned through SMP, Afonbladet, and Expressen. Nothing interesting. Tossing half the fries in the trash, Petersen walked out of the McDonalds, bumping into Mikael Blomkvist. He apologized profusely and offered a friendly hand before taking a seat in the chair she had just been occupying.
At nine fifteen, Lisbeth called marched over across the street to the McDonald's to collect Blomkvist, yet again having no luck in finding someone of reasonable suspicion. According to Blomkvist, no one had brought a computer or computer bag into the McDonalds.
When they were safely in the car passing driving through the Söderledstunneln, Salander told him there had been a hit at ten to nine.
"Shit. I must have just missed them, then."
Salander didn't make any movement that indicated she heard him as they took the highway turn off to Woodland Cemetery. Salander had known many people who were now buried or interred here. She dropped Blomkvist off a safe distance from the group of mourners gathered in the newer area of the cemetery designated for fallen police and military. She had no business in this area, driving off to the older, densely wooded part of the cemetery.
She looked around carefully for any signs of people in the area before turning off the car. Popping the trunk, she lugged the twenty-pound sledgehammer out of the trunk. She wasn't sure of the distance and had only a poorly labeled map to go by, but soon enough she found the grave she had been looking for. Aleksandr Zalachenko. 1940 – 2006. With a single swing, she split the stone marker in two. Then four, then eight. She swung until it the marker was reduced to pebble-like fragments and then kicked them all across the lawn. The fucker deserved an unmarked grave.
Dragging the sledgehammer back to the car, Salander was completely spent. Next she would visit her mother's grave, but was remorseful for not buying flowers.
Berger stood back from the main group of mourners, looking at the hole that had been dug in the muddy earth. Under a tent Figuerola's casket had been draped with the Swedish flag and had a ring of flowers placed at the foot of it. A car engine could be heard driving up the main cemetery road and Berger looked over in time to see Blomkvist climbing out a 2002 burgundy Honda civic. The driver looked too short to even reach the pedals, but managed to floor it all the way to the old cemetery.
She heard his footsteps behind her.
"Two funerals in a week, Micke." He put an arm resolutely around her shoulders.
"I know. Not a good new year so far for any of us."
"Where have you been staying?"
"Lisbeth's."
They just stood there holding each other companionably until Bublanski walked down the hill to quietly announce the service was about to start. Had the situation been any different Blomkvist would have laughed at how his service cap floated on his thick poof of hair.
With great reluctance, Mikael and Berger broke apart long enough to walk towards a pair of folding chairs at the back of the pack. Neither really paid attention to anything being said by the minister. There was no family at the service, but Blomkvist supposed the some twenty Säppo agents in the first and second rows were close enough; Figuerola lived for her team.
A three-gun volley followed after the service. When the tent was deconstructed and the casket lowered into the ground Greger Beckman honked his horn as he sat in his parked Mercedes off the main road. Lisbeth was nowhere to be seen. Berger asked if he needed a ride anywhere, but Blomkvist just shook his head and started down the path towards the old cemetery.
Some two hundred meters down the lane he could see her car parked at a four-way intersection, but it was void of any signs of Salander as far as he could see. The windows were clear and suggested that the car had likely been there for most of the service. With further inspection of the area he found little boot prints leading east through sparsely scattered aspen trees.
He didn't see her until he walked by her, so well concealed next to a bush while leaning against an aspen. Her hood was up and she seemed to be just staring at the headstone in front of her. Agneta Sophia Salander. 1956 – 2004. Blomkvist sunk down to her level, putting a hand on her shoulder just as he had two years ago at the funeral. She refused to acknowledge him just as she had two years ago.
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