On the other hand, Ekstrom had remarkably little on the record about Zalachenko.

Blomkvist lit a cigarette and stood by the window looking out towards Djurgården.

Ekstrom was leading two separate preliminary investigations. Criminal Inspector Faste was the investigative leader in all matters dealing with Salander. Bublanski was working only on Niedermann.

When the name Zalachenko turned up in the preliminary investigation, the logical thing for Ekstrom to do would have been to contact the general director of the Security Police to determine who Zalachenko actually was. Blomkvist could find no such enquiry in Ekstrom's email, journal or notes. But among the notes Blomkvist found several cryptic sentences.

The Salander investigation is fake. Bjorck's original doesn't match Blomkvist's version. Classify TOP SECRET.

Then a series of notes claiming that Salander was paranoid and a schizophrenic.

Correct to lock up Salander 1991.

He found what linked the investigations in the Salander slush, that is, the supplementary information that the prosecutor considered irrelevant to the preliminary investigation, and which would therefore not be presented at the trial or make up part of the chain of evidence against her. This included almost everything that had to do with Zalachenko's background.

The investigation was totally inadequate.

Blomkvist wondered to what extent this was a coincidence and to what extent it was contrived. Where was the boundary? And was Ekstrom aware that there was a boundary?

Could it be that someone was deliberately supplying Ekstrom with believable but misleading information?

Finally Blomkvist logged into hotmail and spent ten minutes checking the half-dozen anonymous email accounts he had created. Each day he had checked the address he had given to Criminal Inspector Modig. He had no great hope that she would contact him, so he was mildly surprised when he opened the inbox and found an email from [email protected] /* */ ›. The message consisted of a single line:

Cafe Madeleine, upper level, 11.00 a.m. Saturday.

Plague pinged Salander at midnight and interrupted her in the middle of a sentence she was writing about her time with Holger Palmgren as her guardian. She cast an irritated glance at the display.

-  What do you want?

-  Hello, Wasp, I'm glad to hear from you too.

-  Okay, okay. What?

-  Teleborian.

She sat up in bed and looked eagerly at the screen of her Palm.

-  Tell me.

-  Trinity has arranged everything in record time.

-  How?

-  The shrink's very active. He spends his life traveling between Uppsala and Stockholm and we couldn't make a hostile takeover.

-  I know. How?

-  Play tennis twice a week. More than two hours. He left the computer in the car in an underground garage.

-  Aha.

-  Trinity had no problem to deactivate the car alarm and set up the computer. Took only thirty minutes to copy everything to the Firewire and install the Asphyxia.

-  Where?

Plague gave her the U.R.L. of the server where he kept Teleborian's hard drive.

-  How Trinity would say, 'this is some nasty shit'.

-  ...?

-  Take a look at that hard drive content.

Salander disconnected from Plague and accessed the server he had directed her to. She spent nearly three hours scrutinizing folder after folder on Teleborian's computer.

She found correspondence between Teleborian and a person with a hotmail address who sent encrypted mail. Since she had access to Teleborian's P.G.P. key, she easily decoded the correspondence. His name was Jonas, no last name. Jonas and Teleborian had an unhealthy interest in seeing that Salander did not thrive.

Yes... we can prove that there is a conspiracy.

But what really interested Salander were the forty-seven folders containing close to nine thousand photographs of explicit child pornography. She clicked on image after image of children aged about fifteen or younger. A number of pictures were of infants. The majority were of girls. Many of them were sadistic.

She found links to at least a dozen people abroad who traded child porn with each other.

Salander bit her lip, but her face was otherwise expressionless.

She remembered the nights when, as a twelve-year-old, she had been strapped down in a stimulus-free room at St Stefan's. Teleborian had come into the room again and again to look at her in the glow of the nightlight.

She knew. He had never touched her, but she had always known.

She should have dealt with Teleborian years ago. But she had repressed the memory of him. She had chosen to ignore his existence.

After a while she pinged Blomkvist on I.C.Q.

Blomkvist spent the night at Salander's apartment on Fiskargatan. He did not shut down the computer until 6.30 a.m. and fell asleep with photographs of gross child pornography whirling through his mind. He woke at 10.15 and rolled out of Salander's bed, showered, and called a taxi to pick him up outside Sodra theatre. He got out at Birger Jarlsgatan at 10.55 and walked to Cafe Madeleine.

Modig was waiting for him with a cup of black coffee in front of her.

"Hi," Blomkvist said.

"I'm taking a big risk here," she said without greeting.

"Nobody will hear of our meeting from me."

She seemed stressed.

"One of my colleagues recently went to see former Prime Minister Falldin. He went there off his own bat, and his job is on the line now too."

"I understand."

"I need a guarantee of anonymity for both of us."

"I don't even know which colleague you're talking about."

"I'll tell you later. I want you to promise to give him protection as a source."

"You have my word."

She looked at her watch.

"Are you in a hurry?"

"Yes. I have to meet my husband and kids at the Sturegalleria in ten minutes. He thinks I'm still at work."

"And Bublanski knows nothing about this?"

"No."

"Right. You and your colleague are sources and you have complete source protection. Both of you. As long as you live."

"My colleague is Jerker Holmberg. You met him down in Goteborg. His father is a Centre Party member, and Jerker has known Prime Minister Falldin since he was a child. He seems to be pleasant enough. So Jerker went to see him and asked about Zalachenko."

Blomkvist's heart began to pound.

"Jerker asked what he knew about the defection, but Falldin didn't reply. When Holmberg told him that we suspect that Salander was locked up by the people who were protecting Zalachenko, well, that really upset him."

"Did he say how much he knew?"

"Falldin told him that the chief of Sapo at the time and a colleague came to visit him very soon after he became Prime Minister. They told a fantastic story about a Russian defector who had come to Sweden, told him that it was the most sensitive military secret Sweden possessed... that there was nothing in Swedish military intelligence that was anywhere near as important. Falldin said that he hadn't known how he should handle it, that there was no-one with much experience in government, the Social Democrats having been in power for more than forty years. He was advised that he alone had to make the decisions, and that if he discussed it with his government colleagues then Sapo would wash their hands of it. He remembered the whole thing as having been very unpleasant."

"What did he do?"

"He realized that he had no choice but to do what the gentlemen from Sapo were proposing. He issued a directive putting Sapo in sole charge of the defector. He undertook never to discuss the matter with anyone. Falldin was never told Zalachenko's name."

"Extraordinary."

"After that he heard almost nothing more during his two terms in office. But he had done something extremely shrewd. He had insisted that an Undersecretary of State be let in on the secret, in case there was a need for a go-between for the government secretariat and those who were protecting Zalachenko."

"Did he remember who it was?"

"It was Bertil K. Janeryd, now Swedish ambassador in the Hague. When it was explained to Falldin how serious this preliminary investigation was, he sat down and wrote to Janeryd."

Modig pushed an envelope across the table.

Dear Bertil,

The secret we both protected during my administration is now the subject of some very serious questions. The person referred to in the matter is now deceased and can no longer come to harm. On the other hand, other people can.

It is of the utmost importance that answers are provided to certain questions that must be answered.

The person who bears this letter is working unofficially and has my trust. I urge you to listen to his story and answer his questions.

Use your famous good judgement.

T.F.

"This letter is referring to Holmberg?"

"No. Jerker asked Falldin not to put a name. He said that he couldn't know who would be going to the Hague." "You mean..."

"Jerker and I have discussed it. We're already out on ice so thin that we'll need paddles rather than ice picks. We have no authority to travel to Holland to interview the ambassador. But you could do it."

Blomkvist folded the letter and was putting it into his jacket pocket when Modig grabbed his hand. Her grip was hard.

"Information for information," she said. "We want to hear everything Janeryd tells you."

Blomkvist nodded. Modig stood up.

"Hang on. You said that Falldin was visited by two people from Sapo. One was the chief of Sapo. Who was the other?"

"Falldin met him only on that one occasion and couldn't remember his name. No notes were taken at the meeting. He remembered him as thin with a narrow moustache. But he did recall that the man was introduced as the boss of the Section for Special Analysis, or something like that. Falldin later looked at an organizational chart of Sapo and couldn't find that department."

The Zalachenko club, Blomkvist thought.

Modig seemed to be weighing her words.

"At risk of ending up shot," she said at last, "there is one record that neither Falldin nor his visitors thought of."

"What was that?"

"Falldin's visitors' logbook at Rosenbad. Jerker requisitioned it. It's a public document."

"And?"

Modig hesitated once again. "The book states only that the Prime Minister met with the chief of Sapo along with a colleague to discuss general questions."

"Was there a name?"

"Yes. E. Gullberg."

Blomkvist could feel the blood rush to his head.

"Evert Gullberg," he said.

Blomkvist called from Cafe Madeleine on his anonymous mobile to book a flight to Amsterdam. The plane would take off from Arlanda at 2.50. He walked to Dressman on Kungsgatan and bought a shirt and a change of underwear, and then he went to a pharmacy to buy a toothbrush and other toiletries. He checked carefully to see that he was not being followed and hurried to catch the Arlanda Express.

The plane landed at Schiphol airport at 4.50, and by 6.30 he was checking into a small hotel about fifteen minutes' walk from the Hague's Centraal Station.

He spent two hours trying to locate the Swedish ambassador and made contact by telephone at around 9.00. He used all his powers of persuasion and explained that he was there on a matter of great urgency. The ambassador finally relented and agreed to meet him at 10.00 on Sunday morning.

Then Blomkvist went out and had a light dinner at a restaurant near his hotel. He was asleep by 11.00.

Ambassador Janeryd was in no mood for small talk when he offered Blomkvist coffee at his residence on Lange Voorhout.

"Well... what is it that's so urgent?"

"Alexander Zalachenko. The Russian defector who came to Sweden in 1976," Blomkvist said, handing him the letter from Falldin.

Janeryd looked surprised. He read the letter and laid it on the table beside him.

Blomkvist explained the background and why Falldin had written to him.

"I... I can't discuss this matter," Janeryd said at last.

"I think you can."

"No, I could only speak of it with the constitutional committee."

"There's a great probability that you will have to do just that. But this letter tells you to use your own good judgement."

"Falldin is an honest man."

"I don't doubt that. And I'm not looking to damage either you or Falldin. Nor do I ask you to tell me a single military secret that Zalachenko may have revealed."

"I don't know any secrets. I didn't even know that his name was Zalachenko. I only knew him by his cover name. He was known as Ruben. But it's absurd that you should think I would discuss it with a journalist."

"Let me give you one very good reason why you should," Blomkvist said and sat up straight in his chair. "This whole story is going to be published very soon. And when that happens, the media will either tear you to pieces or describe you as an honest civil servant who made the best of an impossible situation. You were the one Falldin assigned to be the go-between with those who were protecting Zalachenko. I already know that."

Janeryd was silent for almost a minute.

"Listen, I never had any information, not the remotest idea of the background you've described. I was rather young... I didn't know how I should deal with these people. I met them about twice a year during the time I worked for the government. I was told that Ruben... your Zalachenko, was alive and healthy, that he was co-operating, and that the information he provided was invaluable. I was never privy to the details. I had no 'need to know'."

Blomkvist waited.