encounter

encounter

The truth was that she enjoyed

Kalle Blomkvist—she remembered his nickname and suppressed the impulse to say it out loud—suddenly looked serious. He also looked very tired. The self-confidence that he had shown when he first walked into her apartment was now gone. The clowning was over, or at least had been put aside. She felt him studying her closely .
Salander felt that her composure was barely skin-deep and that she really wasn’t in complete control of her nerves. This totally unlooked-for visit had shaken her in a way that she had never experienced in connection with her work. Her bread and butter was spying on people. In fact she had never thought of what she did for Armansky as a real job; she thought of it more as a complicated pastime, a sort of hobby.
digging into the lives of other people and exposing the secrets they were trying to hide. She had been doing it, in one form or another, for as long as she could remember. And she was still doing it today, not only when Armansky gave her an assignment, but sometimes for the sheer fun of it. It gave her a kick. It was like a complicated computer game, except that it dealt with real live people. And now one of her hobbies was sitting right here in her kitchen, feeding her bagels. It was totally absurd.
“I have a fascinating problem,” Blomkvist said. “Tell me this, when you were doing your research on me for Herr Frode, did you have any idea what it was going to be used for?”
“No.”
“The purpose was to find out all that information about me because Frode, or rather his employer, wanted to give me a freelance job .”
“I see.”
He gave her a faint smile.
“One of these days you and I should have a discussion about the ethics of snooping into other people’s lives. But right now I have a different problem. The job I was offered, and which inexplicably I agreed to do, is without doubt the most bizarre assignment I’ve ever undertaken. Before I say more I need to be able to trust you, Lisbeth.”
“What do you mean?”
“Armansky tells me you’re 100 percent reliable. But I still want to ask you the question. Can I tell you confidential things without your telling them to anyone else, by any means, ever?”
“Wait a minute. You’ve talked to Dragan? Is he the one who sent you here?” I’m going to kill you, you fucking stupid Armenian.
“Not exactly. You’re not the only one who can find out someone’s address; I did that all on my own. I looked you up in the national registry. There are three Lisbeth Salanders, and the other two weren’t a good match. But I had a long talk with Armansky yesterday. He too thought that I wanted to make trouble over your ferreting around in my private life. In the end I convinced him that I had a legitimate purpose Hong Kong Stories.”
“Which is what?”
“As I told you, Frode’s employer hired me to do a job. I’ve reached a point where I need a skilled researcher. Frode told me about you and said that you were pretty good. He hadn’t meant to identify you, it just slipped out. I explained to Armansky what I wanted. He OK’d the whole thing and tried to call you. And here I am. Call him if you want.”
It took Salander a minute to find her mobile among the clothes that Mimmi had pulled off her.

A week

The two women had been friends since kindergarten and their lives had followed very similar paths. After Ronald F. Rickman, Esquire had packed his bags and announced he was leaving Joey for a woman less than half her age, she went through her own personal 12-step program. When the initial shock wore off instead of attending boring meetings, or turning to a higher force, she discovered Dr. Schwartz. If it could be tucked, sucked, lifted, injected, peeled or stretched, Dr. S was always there. She bragged that she had spent enough on plastic surgery to put one of the good doctor’s kids through college. Ivy League college. For those who had not seen her in a few years, the transformation was startling. For the 24 years of her marriage she was Josephine Middleton Rickman, President of the local Junior League and, like Penelope, a member of both the Daughters of the American Revolution and the Daughters of the Confederacy .


She was the wife of one of the most successful trial lawyers in the country and a pillar of Charleston’s high society. Now she was a tight gym rat with a head-turning body that looked a minimum of ten years younger than the DOB on her driver’s license. Penelope opened the box and dumped the contents on the kitchen counter. She checked inside to be sure it was empty before tossing the box aside. “What have we here?” Joey said, biting into an apple. “You remember Mark Hatchet?” 6 Rod Pennington & Jeffery A. Martin “Our age and single; of course I remember him.” “Single is not the word I would use. Between wives may be more accurate.” “Well, I just happen to be between husbands.” “He has an assignment for me.” “God, I hope it’s more interesting than that last one. What was that? The Vidalia Onion Festival, or some nonsense reenex?


, all expenses paid, in beautiful Vidalia Georgia at the height of mosquito season.” Penelope shrugged; beggars can’t be choosers. The onion article made the Sunday travel section and won her a byline in The Washington Post. For many reporters, getting an article published in a major paper like the Post would be a career moment. For her it was another step back to the world she had grown to miss but that didn’t seem to be missing her. Because of Mark’s vow of silence, Penelope hadn’t mentioned anything about this when Joey called earlier to confirm their dinner date. Still, Penelope had been secretly hoping Joey might drop by. She hadn’t liked the tone of Mark’s voice, nor the way he had shrouded it in such mystery, and she could use the moral support. Scanning the contents of the box spread out on the countertop, Penelope found a disposable cell phone and a large white envelope heavily sealed with transparent packing tape.


Attached to the outside of the envelope was a handwritten note with instructions to call an unfamiliar phone number with the enclosed cell phone before opening the envelope. Looking over Penelope’s shoulder and reading the note, Joey said, “Yeah, right,” as she reached for the envelope, but Penelope slapped her hands away. “Excuse me!” Joey exalted as she returned to foraging through Penelope’s refrigerator. “Here’s the reason you’re losing so much weight, you have no food.” Penelope picked up the phone and began dialing the number. Hatchet answered before the third ring. “It’s me. Are you alone?” “No, Joey is here.” “Hi, Mark,” Joey shouted, opening a cupboard and finding it just as sparsely stocked as the refrigerator. “Have you opened the package?” “I haven’t been given permission yet.” “Like that would ever stop you.

I’m proud that my name is a byword

“The Vanger companies are still among the few family-held firms in the country. Thirty family members are minority shareholders. This has always been the strength of the corporation, but also our greatest weakness.” Vanger paused and then said in a tone of mounting urgency, “Mikael, you can ask questions later, but I want you to take me at my word when I say that I detest most of the members of my family. They are for the most part thieves, misers, bullies, and incompetents. I ran the company for thirty-five years—almost all the time in the midst of relentless bickering. They were my worst enemies, far worse than competing companies or the government .
“I said that I wanted to commission you to do two things. First, I want you to write a history or biography of the Vanger family. For simplicity’s sake, we can call it my autobiography. I will put my journals and archives at your disposal. You will have access to my innermost thoughts and you can publish all the dirt you dig up. I think this story will make Shakespeare’s tragedies read like light family entertainment.”
“Why?”
“Why do I want to publish a scandalous history of the Vanger family? Or why do I ask you to write it?”
“Both, I suppose.”
“To tell you the truth, I don’t care whether the book is ever published. But I do think that the story should be written, if only in a single copy that you deliver directly to the Royal Library. I want this story to be there for posterity when I die. My motive is the simplest imaginable: revenge reenex.”
“What do you want to revenge?”
“for a man who keeps his word and remembers his promises. I’ve never played political games. I’ve never had problems negotiating with trade unions. Even Prime Minister Erlander had respect for me in his day. For me it was a matter of ethics; I was responsible for the livelihoods of thousands of people, and I cared about my employees. Oddly enough, Martin has the same attitude, even though he’s a very different person. He too has tried to do the right thing. Sadly Martin and I are rare exceptions in our family. There are many reasons why the Vanger Corporation is on the ropes today, but one of the key ones is the short-termism and greed of my relatives. If you accept the assignment, I’ll explain how my family went about torpedoing the firm.”
“I won’t lie to you either,” Blomkvist said. “Researching and writing a book like this would take months. I don’t have the motivation or the energy to do it.”
“I believe I can talk you into it SmarTone online shop.”
“I doubt it. But you said there were two things. The book is the pretext. What is the real objective?”
Vanger stood up, laboriously again, and took the photograph of Harriet Vanger from the desk. He set it down in front of Blomkvist.
“While you write the biography I want you to scrutinise the family with the eyes of a journalist. It will also give you an alibi for poking around in the family history. What I want is for you to solve a mystery. That’s your real assignment.”