Chapter 7 Women Who Hate Men
A/N – This chapter is a bit shorter as it doesn't feature much of Blomkvist or Lisbeth. Next chapter it gets awesome!
January 11th - 18th
At five minutes to five, the X2000 to Göteborg pulled into Central Station. With a fur-fringed hood pulled low over her face, Lisbeth boarded onto one of the first class cars. She picked a seat at the very back where she had a full view of anyone in the car. An elderly couple took their seats at the front just as the doors closed. When the train started to creep out of the station, she pulled her laptop out and skimmed through her emails. Plague had kept his promise and hooked her up with a possible up and coming member of the Hacker Republic, a twenty-one year old known only on the Internet as Janne. According to Plague he was currently unemployed, making him an excellent choice for chasing Camilla around Stockholm at a moments notice.
She typed up a quick email to Janne's Hotmail account with an attachment to her Asphyxia Mobile prototype before stowing the laptop in her shoulder bag. Chasing Mikael's laptop around was getting old. Camilla had at least three prepaid phones on her person and probably had a personal phone switched on. If her lackey could catch Camilla at just the right moment, the hunt would become childs play for Salander.
Lisbeth waited until the train pulled out of Katrineholm station before getting up to head towards the buffet car. She stocked up on relatively cheap cigarettes at the counter and bought copies of Dagens Nyheter and Expressen before wandering back to her seat. The car was relatively empty, leaving her free to sprawl out with her back to the window and feet hanging in the aisle without anyone bitching about it.
She found Tony Scala's assault at the top of page two in DN, but was relieved that her involvement was nowhere to be noted. However,Expressen had gone to the extreme with the new information on Lieve Petersen's identity.
Salander was getting really fucking tired of her old passport picture being plastered all over the Swedish media.
The headline was proclaimed 'The Salander Sisters' in thick size seventy-two font and featured her passport picture and Camilla's Belgian drivers license side-by-side. Salander could so no relation of any sort between the pictures. She tossed the paper onto an empty seat across the aisle before cracking open the window to light a cigarette.
Teetering on the edge of an armchair, Camilla passed an old vacuum tube between the vents linking the Svavelsjö MC bathroom to what she presumed was Sandberg's 'office.' She'd barely finished sealing the vent when a loud thumping could be heard coming from the garage. She picked up her suppressed Glock from the edge of the sink before creeping out into the main area.
She could hear the scrape of the garage door being lifted as she stood at the ready behind the bar. Two sets of footsteps shuffled through the garage. She'd barely ducked behind the bar when the door suddenly flung open.
"Sandberg! We know you're here!" Serbs. Camilla was in luck; they were the same men Sandberg had listed out for her. Through a hole in the bar she could see they were carrying broken down Uzis as they scanned the main room. Several times their eyes would skim over the very section of the bar she was hiding behind. The taller one shrugged before walking off down the hall.
When she could hear their footsteps on the creaking floor of Sandberg's office, she set off to creep down the hall after them. Drawers were slammed around as she darted past the open office door. It opened and closed from the outside and there was a sturdy old chair sitting in the center of the hallway. When a particularly heavy file cabinet fell to the floor, she slammed the door to the office shut and pushed the chair up against the door. Time for phase two.
Stored under the bathroom sink were several gallon jugs of bleach. It also happened to be that there were still several old containers of browning ammonia left over in the dark recesses of the former meatpacking warehouse. Their fists hammered away mercilessly at the door as she flipped on the horrendously loud fan in the ceiling, drowning out all of their protests and cries as she dumped the ammonia and bleach into a cleaning bucket.
The effects were instant and Camilla shoved a few rags into the cracks under both the bathroom and office doors as the whitish cloud of chloramine wafted from under them, the men's screaming reducing to a gurgle.
She blinked her eyes, a slight sting in them. She'd had worse before, when she had real chemicals at her disposal, not diluted bathroom cleaners. Those were teenager and wannabe anarchist toys. Her real arsenal was packed away safely in several locations around Stockholm from her several stakeout trips in the months before.
She'd known it would be a long job and had prepared accordingly. The phosphorus was the only chemical she had readily available at any given time, but caches of chlorine, phosgene, and a few of her own chemical creations could be easily retrieved when needed. But now she found that she didn't have enough to get the job done if Sandberg's list was accurate. She'd have to schedule a restock trip before she could move forward any farther.
The noise in the office had died down substantially. At this stage they were likely beyond help and probably unconscious with the high concentration she'd pumped into the room. But they had guns, and that was the problem. A dying man could still shoot; she'd learned that lesson the hard way in one of her first dealings of the armed variety. No, better wait a while longer, she decided.
Waiting wasn't really her thing, though. Mikael Blomkvist's beat up little Mac sat on the bar counter with Sandberg's list resting on top of the keyboard. She could leave whenever she wanted and walk off to the Hötorget tunnelbana, but certain precautions were required. Like shoving a mostly empty bookcase in front of the office door.
With her bags were thrown into the back of Sandberg's trunk, her presence in the gang clubhouse was completely erased. She still expected some company; the chop shop attached to the alleyway was still in business. Supposedly two members worked there during the late week, but today proved that odd drop-ins from members and nonmembers were common. She stuck her silenced pistol in the glove compartment before reversing into the alleyway.
About twenty minutes northwest of Norrmalm clubhouse, Camilla turned the golden Saab onto a side street a block from a generic public storage facility. The unit she had the key to was a dinky little eight by four foot room, but served its main purpose well. Gas tanks didn't take up much space, after all. The facility had strict measures on what could be kept within the lockers, but with a little creativity she could sneak out several gas cylinders conveniently labeled as 'helium' and a gas mask without the early morning guard batting an eye.
With the cylinders stowed in the backseat under a blanket, Camilla turned back towards Stockholm, her pistol tucked into the door panel to entire time.
Across from Hötorget tunnelbana, Hacker Republic hopeful Janne sat in the Burger King overlooking Sveavägen. His third cup of coffee sat on top of the morning copy of Expressen, completely covering Lisbeth Salander's face. Plague had sent him a job offer again, but the purse was too high to be just Plague alone. Janne immediately expressed his interest and had been rewarded by an email by another hacker known only as Wasp.
For 20,000 krona a week, he had to stakeout the Hötorget, T-Central, and Slussen tunnelbana stations for a short, black haired, twenty-seven year old woman carrying a 2004 MacBook with a Swedish flag decal on the lid. It was possibly the easiest money he had ever made.
He opened up his Hotmail account, finding two emails from Wasp. One was a program named Asphyxia that could be downloaded onto a micro SD card and transferred onto a mobile phone in less than a minute. Somehow he had to get a hold of the woman's phone and place the Asphyxia program on it to get any future paychecks. The next email was an electronic bank statement remarking on the transfer of 20,000 krona from Wasp Enterprises to his own account and a link to a Yahoo! group. Wasp was still online.
Hello? He typed.
Do you understand what you need to do? Wasp typed back. It seemed that whoever this person was did not fancy small talk.
Yes.
Anytime you see someone fitting the description I gave you, post a picture to this group. I'll answer back on whether or not to proceed. Wasp typed.
Got it. What does Asphyxia do? Janne typed.
Wasp didn't answer back, but remained online, lurking in the background of the group.
An hour later, the group chat blipped to life. Janne had been listening to a podcast and nearly spilt a fifth coffee across his keyboard at the sound.
T-Central McDonalds.
He didn't argue, but packed up his laptop and unlocked his bike from the rack before pedaling fiercely down several alleys towards T-Central tunnelbana. His eyes immediately fell on the Mac with the Swede flag on the lid, being used by a pale woman wearing a beanie over wavy black hair. Janna walked without seeming to care, snapping a picture of her general profile once he'd established himself at a table directly behind her. Wasp's busy icon changed to online five minutes later.
Y.
The chat icon switched offline before he could add anything else.
Janne resisted the urge to fist pump. Of course, without Wasp he wouldn't have found the woman, but still, she was here and that meant his next paycheck was that much closer. He could see in the reflection on his screen that a phone was laying just to the left of the woman's hand.
As he thought of the different scenarios that could possibly land her Blackberry in his hands, it began to vibrate across the counter.
"Hey." The woman answered in singsong German. Her voice instantly grated on Janne's nerves as he opened up his old dictation software from his time at university.
"Give me two more week weeks. No, but two of them are all the way out in fucking Malmö!"
Janne typed furiously to fill in some of the translation errors as she packed up her laptop, raising her voice towards the caller. Her accent was throwing the software completely off, and he couldn't place his finger on how to change around the program to be more accurate.
"Open up a fucking map if you don't know where that is, it's not my problem you're as ignorant as an American." She snapped the phone shut and stuck it in her left front pocket.
Conversation over, Janne also shut his laptop, walking out to the Seven Eleven attached to the tunnelbana entrance. The woman was still in the McDonalds, ordering something from the counter. He waited patiently, transferring and re-reading the call transcript on his PDA before sending it to the Yahoo! group.
The woman walked out five minutes later, walking towards the tunnelbana station while carrying a coffee and a newspaper. Her phone was sticking halfway out of her left pocket, begging for a pair of quick hands to grab it.
Janne hitched his laptop bag to his opposite shoulder before walking full speed towards the woman, eyes down with phone pressed against his ear in a perfect model of inattentiveness. When she was close enough he veered directly into her shoulder, knocking her off balance as an empty hand delved into her pocket and locked around the Blackberry, slipping it into the pouch of his laptop bag.
He looked down in concern as the woman tried to get up. He hadn't meant to nail her that hard. Janne held out a hand, pulling her up. "Sorry about that. You alright?"
"Fine, fine, thank you," she responded, already heading off towards the tunnelbana entrance. He turned to follow her, slipping the micro SD card into the phone. It took less than thirty seconds to download, about half the trip down the tunnelbana escalator.
The woman turned around on the train just in time to see him running at her, phone in hand while he jammed his foot between the doors to keep the train from moving. "You dropped this."
"Oh, supposed I did." The door to the train closed shut as she mouthed, "Thanks."
When the train pulled out he checked the destination. Hötorget station.
It wasn't until four days later that Salander finally had the time to open up her laptop to inspect Janne's handiwork. Her iPhone died and she'd left the charger at home, plunging her into a period of technological abstinence. The days passed with brutal slowness, her days spent in the same classroom setting she'd hated as a teen, listening to a lecture on the history of Swedish law.
Four days down, eleven more to go. Tomorrow she would take the last evening train back to Stockholm for two days of recoup and reassessment of how to go about putting Camilla out of business.
Her desktop was beginning to get cluttered with all of the hard drive copies she had managed to collect. A new folder had popped up since she'd last checked, labeled CS-Mobile. She right clicked 'open,' not knowing where to start. It was half past eleven at night and she was too fucking tired to read through every single file that had collected in the folder.
First, she decided, she would transfer the entire contacts list into a separate folder. Two contacts, JS and HS, stood out the most. The number traced back to somewhere in Estonia, but she would have to wait for a call to pinpoint the exact location. It gave her a slight case of the creeps. Zalachenko had deep roots in Estonia, especially Tallinn. Salander was beginning to think that the family business was still thriving, even without Zalachenko at the helm.
In another window, Salander opened up her coordinate tracking site and plugged in the coordinates of Camilla's calls. Five had been made from inside the Svavelsjö clubhouse in Norrmalm over the last nine days. It didn't make any sense, but she'd be damn sure to check up on that particular lead when she was back in Stockholm.
It was only after another hour of reading through Camilla's phone contents that she finally closed the lid to her Mac and flopped down on the dinky little hotel bed she'd been using. She missed her king sized bed at Fiskargatan. She also missed a certain bedmate, but would be damned if she truly admitted that.
In Norrmalm, Camilla walked into the former archive room of the biker clubhouse, this time armed with a gas mask. At her feet were two, very dead Yugoslavs, their Uzi's held stiffly in their rigored hands. One by one, she dragged them both back to the cool room. The excess chloramine gas poured out of the room slowly, creating a cloud of pale green gas a hanging a few inches off the floor.
Her bright idea had rendered the building unusable. It was time to clear out. The ferry to Tallinn left at six the next morning. Apparently the Yugoslavs in Malmö could wait. There were…issues in Tallinn that were more imperative than hunting down gun traffickers.
But Camilla wasn't about to just leave three bodies so easily open to discovery in the clubhouse now that she had to take her leave. She fished out her bag from Sandberg's car, pulling the airtight jar of white phosphorus out. In the main room she filled a pail with water and dropped a four-kilo hunk of phosphorus in it, a prepaid cell phone encased in the pale yellow block.
With the phosphorus safely submerged, she snapped a leg off of one of the barstools. She had to choose her target carefully. What was the most likely entrance that would be used if anyone decided to come trumping in? It was a fifty-fifty split between the front door and the garage entrance. Or there was always the door leading towards the archive and cool rooms. She decided on the latter, propping the broken stool against the door with the pail balancing precariously on the seat. By midnight, Camilla crawled into Sandberg's Saab for a quick nap away from the chloramine fumes, but was up and ready to join the ferry line up by four. She failed to notice a black, nondescript van parked half a block up the alley as she pulled away towards Sveavägen.
Salander waited to the X2000 cleared Alingsås before opening up her laptop. There were five emails waiting for her. Two were emails with transcripts of all the calls Camilla had made in the last two days. Another two were spam emails that were quickly sent to the trash. The final one was from Blomkvist, sent three hours ago with a link to Dagens Nyheter. She shot off a response to pick her up at Central Station at 11:30. The link sent her to the front page of DN.
'Three Bodies Discovered Inside Svavelsjö MC Clubhouse, White Phosphorus Explosion Injures Two Investigators'
Besides the obvious, there was a brief nod to the 'sadistic' murder of Niedermann who was incorrectly referred to as Ronald Lieberman and Svavelsjö's small part in the investigation into her supposed triple murder spree. Salander was surprised they hadn't listed Camilla as the suspect. The phosphorus bomb was a complete giveaway. In the buffet car, she picked up a more descriptive copy of the DN, the bombing taking over the headlines.
Salander read through the article three times before switching her laptop to look over the mobile transcripts Janne had typed out for her. Camilla had cleared out of Sweden earlier that morning and was laying low with someone by the name of Jarrod. The name sounded strangely familiar, but she buried the thought at the back of her mind as she skimmed through the last transcript. It was a call to a taxi company for a ride from the Tallinn-Stockholm ferry to a small township an hour east of Tallinn.
An hour later, the train crept into Central Station. Her little Honda sat outside in the roundabout, Blomkvist reading a copy of Aftonbladet under the flickering dome light with his iPod plugged in. He was a complete sitting duck and jumped when she banged on the hood as she passed by.
"Hey, hey."
"Hey. Did you get the link I sent you?"
"Yes."
"And?"
She shrugged. "I have a hunch."
This was a pretty short transitional chapter. Feels kind of weird to have only written 8 pages. Fun stuff starts next chapter! Please review!
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