"Well, isn't that something," Salander said so quietly that Armansky only saw her lips move. She stood up and headed for the door.

"Wait. Where are you going?"

"Home. I want to check some stuff. Call me when you've got something."

The news that Millennium had acquired reinforcements in the form of Henrik Vanger was a considerably bigger event than Lisbeth Salander had expected. Aftonbladet's evening edition was already out, with a story from the TT wire service summing up Vanger's career and stating that it was the first time in almost twenty years that the old industrial magnate had made a public appearance. The news that he was becoming part owner of Millennium was viewed as just as improbable as Peter Wallenberg or Erik Penser popping up as part owners of ETC or sponsors of Ordfront magazine.

The story was so big that the 7:30 edition of Rapport ran it as its third lead and gave it a three-minute slot. Erika Berger was interviewed at a conference table in Millennium's office. All of a sudden the Wennerstrom affair was news again.

"We made a serious mistake last year which resulted in the magazine being prosecuted for libel. This is something we regret... and we will be following up this story at a suitable occasion."

"What do you mean by 'following up the story'?" the reporter said.

"I mean that we will eventually be telling our version of events, which we have not done thus far."

"You could have done that at the trial."

"We chose not to do so. But our investigative journalism will continue as before."

"Does that mean you're holding to the story that prompted the indictment?"

"I have nothing more to say on that subject."

"You sacked Mikael Blomkvist after the verdict was delivered."

"That is inaccurate. Read our press release. He needed a break. He'll be back as CEO and publisher later this year."

The camera panned through the newsroom while the reporter quickly recounted background information on Millennium's stormy history as an original and outspoken magazine. Blomkvist was not available for comment. He had just been shut up in Rullaker Prison, about an hour from ostersund in Jamtland.

Salander noticed Dirch Frode at the edge of the TV screen passing a doorway in the editorial offices. She frowned and bit her lower lip in thought.

That Monday had been a slow news day, and Vanger got a whole four minutes on the 9:00 news. He was interviewed in a TV studio in Hedestad. The reporter began by stating that after two decades of having stood back from the spotlight the industrialist Henrik Vanger was back. The segment began with a snappy biography in black-and-white TV images, showing him with Prime Minister Erlander and opening factories in the sixties. The camera then focused on a studio sofa where Vanger was sitting perfectly relaxed. He wore a yellow shirt, narrow green tie, and comfortable dark-brown suit. He was gaunt, but he spoke in a clear, firm voice. And he was also quite candid. The reporter asked Vanger what had prompted him to become a part owner of Millennium.

"It's an excellent magazine which I have followed with great interest for several years. Today the publication is under attack. It has enemies who are organising an advertising boycott, trying to run it into the ground."

The reporter was not prepared for this, but guessed at once that the already unusual story had yet more unexpected aspects.

"What's behind this boycott?"

"That's one of the things that Millennium will be examining closely. But I'll make it clear now that Millennium will not be sunk with the first salvo."

"Is this why you bought into the magazine?"

"It would be deplorable if the special interests had the power to silence those voices in the media that they find uncomfortable."

Vanger acted as though he had been a cultural radical espousing freedom of speech all his life. Blomkvist burst out laughing as he spent his first evening in the TV room at Rullaker Prison. His fellow inmates glanced at him uneasily.

Later that evening, when he was lying on the bunk in his cell - which reminded him of a cramped motel room with its tiny table, its one chair, and one shelf on the wall, he admitted that Vanger and Berger had been right about how the news would be marketed. He just knew that something had changed in people's attitude towards Millennium.

Vanger's support was no more or less than a declaration of war against Wennerstrom. The message was clear: in the future you will not be fighting with a magazine with a staff of six and an annual budget corresponding to the cost of a luncheon meeting of the Wennerstrom Group. You will now be up against the Vanger Corporation, which may be a shadow of its former greatness but still presents a considerably tougher challenge.

The message that Vanger had delivered on TV was that he was prepared to fight, and for Wennerstrom, that war would be costly.

Berger had chosen her words with care. She had not said much, but her saying that the magazine had not told its version created the impression that there was something to tell. Despite the fact that Blomkvist had been indicted, convicted, and was now imprisoned, she had come out and said - if not in so many words - that he was innocent of libel and that another truth existed. Precisely because she had not used the word "innocent," his innocence seemed more apparent than ever. The fact that he was going to be reinstated as publisher emphasised that Millennium felt it had nothing to be ashamed of. In the eyes of the public, credibility was no problem - everyone loves a conspiracy theory, and in the choice between a filthy rich businessman and an outspoken and charming editor in chief, it was not hard to guess where the public's sympathies would lie. The media, however, were not going to buy the story so easily - but Berger may have disarmed a number of critics.

None of the day's events had changed the situation fundamentally, but they had bought time and they had shifted the balance of power a little. Blomkvist imagined that Wennerstrom had probably had an unpleasant evening. Wennerstrom could not know how much, or how little, they knew, and before he made his next move he was going to have to find out.

With a grim expression, Berger turned off the TV and the VCR after having watched first her own and then Vanger's interview. It was 2:45 in the morning, and she had to stifle the impulse to call Blomkvist. He was locked up, and it was unlikely that he was allowed to keep his mobile. She had arrived home so late that her husband was already asleep. She went over to the bar and poured herself a healthy measure of Aberlour single malt - she drank alcohol about once a year - and sat at the window, looking out across Saltsjon to the lighthouse at the entrance to Skuru Sound.

She and Blomkvist had argued heatedly when they were alone after she concluded the agreement with Vanger. They had weathered many full-blooded arguments about what angle to use for a specific article, the design of the magazine, the evaluation of their sources' credibility, and a thousand other things involved in putting out a magazine. But the argument in Vanger's guest house had touched on principles that made her aware she was on shaky ground.

"I don't know what to do now," Blomkvist had said. "This man has hired me to ghostwrite his autobiography. Up until now I've been free to get up and leave the moment he tries to force me to write something that isn't true, or tries to persuade me to slant the story in a way I don't hold with. Now he's a part owner of our magazine - and the only one with the resources to save Millennium. All of a sudden I'm sitting on the fence, in a position that a board of professional ethics would never approve."

"Have you got a better idea?" Berger asked him. "Because if you have, spit it out, before we type up the contract and sign it."

"Ricky, Vanger is exploiting us in some sort of private vendetta against Wennerstrom."

"So what? We have a vendetta against Wennerstrom ourselves."

Blomkvist turned away from her and lit a cigarette.

Their conversation had gone on for quite a while, until Berger went into the bedroom, undressed, and climbed into bed. She pretended to be asleep when he got in beside her two hours later.

This evening a reporter from Dagens Nyheter had asked her the same question: "How is Millennium going to be able credibly to assert its independence?"

"What do you mean?"

The reporter thought the question had been clear enough, but he spelled it out anyway.

"One of Millennium's objectives is to investigate corporations. How will the magazine be able to claim in a credible way that it's investigating the Vanger Corporation?"

Berger gave him a surprised look, as if the question were completely unexpected.

"Are you insinuating that Millennium's credibility is diminished because a well-known financier with significant resources has entered the picture?"

"You could not now credibly investigate the Vanger Corporation."

"Is that a rule that applies specifically to Millennium?"

"Excuse me?"

"I mean, you work for a publication that is for the most part owned by major corporate entities. Does that mean that none of the newspapers published by the Bonnier Group is credible? Aftonbladet is owned by a huge Norwegian corporation, which in turn is a major player in IT and communications - does that mean that anything Aftonbladet publishes about the electronics industry is not credible? Metro is owned by the Stenbeck Group. Are you saying that no publication in Sweden that has significant economic interests behind it is credible?"

"No, of course not."

"Then why are you insinuating that Millennium's credibility would be diminished because we also have backers?"

The reporter held up his hand.

"OK, I'll retract that question."

"No. Don't do that. I want you to print exactly what I said. And you can add that if DN promises to focus a little extra on the Vanger Corporation, then we'll focus a little more on the Bonnier Group."

But it was an ethical dilemma.

Blomkvist was working for Henrik Vanger, who was in a position to sink Millennium with the stroke of a pen. What would happen if Blomkvist and Vanger became enemies?

And above all - what price did she put on her own credibility, and when had she been transformed from an independent editor into a corrupted one?

Salander closed her browser and shut down her PowerBook. She was out of work and hungry. The first condition did not worry her so much, since she had regained control over her bank account and Bjurman had already taken on the status of a vague unpleasantness in her past. The hunger she dealt with by switching on the coffeemaker. She made three big open rye-bread sandwiches with cheese, caviar, and a hard-boiled egg. She ate her nighttime snacks on the sofa in the living room while she worked on the information she had gathered.

The lawyer Frode from Hedestad had hired her to do an investigation of Mikael Blomkvist, the journalist who was given a prison sentence for libelling financier Hans-Erik Wennerstrom. A few months later Henrik Vanger, also from Hedestad, joins Blomkvist's magazine's board of directors and claims that there is a conspiracy to crush the magazine. All this on the same day that the former goes to prison. Most fascinating of all: a two-year-old background article - "With two empty hands" - about Hans-Erik Wennerstrom, which she found in the online edition of Monopoly Financial Magazine. It seemed that he began his career in the very same Vanger Corporation in the late sixties.

You didn't have to be a rocket scientist to see that these events were somehow related. There had to be a skeleton in one of their cupboards, and Salander loved hunting skeletons. Besides, she had nothing else on at the moment.

PART 3. Mergers

MAY 16 TO JULY 11

Thirteen percent of the women in Sweden have been subjected to aggravated sexual assault outside of a sexual relationship.

CHAPTER 15

Friday, May 16 - Saturday, May 31

Mikael Blomkvist was released from Rullaker Prison on Friday, May 16, two months after he was admitted. The same day he entered the facility, he had submitted an application for parole, with no great optimism. He never did quite understand the technical reasons behind his release, but it may have had something to do with the fact that he did not use any holiday leave and that the prison population was forty-two while the number of beds was thirty-one. In any case, the warden - Peter Sarowsky, a forty-year-old Polish exile - with whom Blomkvist got along well, wrote a recommendation that his sentence be reduced.

His time at Rullaker had been unstressful and pleasant enough. The prison had been designed, as Sarowsky expressed it, for hooligans and drunk drivers, not for hardened criminals. The daily routines reminded him of living in a youth hostel. His fellow prisoners, half of whom were second-generation immigrants, regarded Blomkvist as something of a rare bird in the group. He was the only inmate to appear on the TV news, which lent him a certain status.

On his first day, he was called in for a talk and offered therapy, training from Komvux, or the opportunity for other adult education, and occupational counselling. He did not feel any need at all for social rehabilitation, he had completed his studies, he thought, and he already had a job. On the other hand, he asked for permission to keep his iBook in his cell so that he could continue to work on the book he was commissioned to write. His request was granted without further ado, and Sarowsky arranged to bring him a lockable cabinet so that he could leave the computer in his cell. Not that any of the inmates would have stolen or vandalised it or anything like that. They rather kept a protective eye on him.

In this way Blomkvist spent two months working about six hours a day on the Vanger family chronicle, work that was interrupted only by a few hours of cleaning or recreation each day. Blomkvist and two others, one of whom came from Skovde and had his roots in Chile, were assigned to clean the prison gym each day. Recreation consisted of watching TV, playing cards, or weight training. Blomkvist discovered that he was a passable poker player, but he still lost a few fifty-ore coins every day. Regulations permitted playing for money if the total pot did not exceed five kronor.