The Section was faced with its worst crisis since the day he had created it.

Zalachenko dragged himself to the toilet. Now that he had crutches, he could move around his room. On Sunday he forced himself through short, sharp training sessions. The pain in his jaw was still excruciating and he could manage only liquid food, but he could get out of his bed and begin to make himself mobile. Having lived so long with a prosthesis he was used enough to crutches. He practised moving noiselessly on them, manoeuvring back and forth around his bed. Every time his right foot touched the floor, a terrible pain shot up his leg.

He gritted his teeth. He thought about the fact that his daughter was very close by. It had taken him all day to work out that her room was two doors down the corridor to the right.

The night nurse had been gone ten minutes, everything was quiet, it was 2.00 in the morning. Zalachenko laboriously got up and fumbled for his crutches. He listened at the door, but heard nothing. He pulled open the door and went into the corridor. He heard faint music from the nurses’ station. He made his way to the end of the corridor, pushed open the door, and looked into the empty landing where the lifts were. Going back down the corridor, he stopped at the door to his daughter’s room and rested there on his crutches for half a minute, listening.

Salander opened her eyes when she heard a scraping sound. It was as though someone was dragging something along the corridor. For a moment there was only silence, and she wondered if she were imagining things. Then she heard the same sound again, moving away. Her uneasiness grew.

Zalachenko was out there somewhere.

She felt fettered to her bed. Her skin itched under the neck brace. She felt an intense desire to move, to get up. Gradually she succeeded in sitting up. That was all she could manage. She sank back on to the pillow.

She ran her hand over the neck brace and located the fastenings that held it in place. She opened them and dropped the brace to the floor. Immediately it was easier to breathe.

What she wanted more than anything was a weapon, and to have the strength to get up and finish the job once and for all.

With difficulty she propped herself up, switched on the night light and looked around the room. She could see nothing that would serve her purpose. Then her eyes fell on a nurses’ table by the wall three metres from her bed. Someone had left a pencil there.

She waited until the night nurse had been and gone, which tonight she seemed to be doing about every half hour. Presumably the reduced frequency of the nurse’s visits meant that the doctors had decided her condition had improved; over the weekend the nurses had checked on her at least once every fifteen minutes. For herself, she could hardly notice any difference.

When she was alone she gathered her strength, sat up, and swung her legs over the side of the bed. She had electrodes taped to her body to record her pulse and breathing, but the wires stretched in the direction of the pencil. She put her weight on her feet and stood up. Suddenly she swayed, off balance. For a second she felt as though she would faint, but she steadied herself against the bedhead and concentrated her gaze on the table in front of her. She took small, wobbly steps, reached out and grabbed the pencil.

Then she retreated slowly to the bed. She was exhausted.

After a while she managed to pull the sheet and blanket up to her chin. She studied the pencil. It was a plain wooden pencil, newly sharpened. It would make a passable weapon – for stabbing a face or an eye.

She laid it next to her hip and fell asleep.

CHAPTER 6

Blomkvist got up just after 9.00 and called Eriksson at Millennium.

“Good morning, editor-in-chief,” he said.

“I’m still in shock that Erika is gone and you want me to take her place. I can’t believe she’s gone already. Her office is empty.”

“Then it would probably be a good idea to spend the day moving in there.”

“I feel extremely self-conscious.”

“Don’t be. Everyone agrees that you’re the best choice. And if need be you can always come to me or Christer.”

“Thank you for your trust in me.”

“You’ve earned it,” Blomkvist said. “Just keep working the way you always do. We’ll deal with any problems as and when they crop up.”

He told her he was going to be at home all day writing. Eriksson realized that he was reporting in to her the way he had with Berger.

“O.K. Is there anything you want us to do?”

“No. On the contrary… if you have any instructions for me, just call. I’m still on the Salander story, trying to find out what’s happening there, but for everything else to do with the magazine, the ball’s in your court. You make the decisions. You’ll have my support if you need it.”

“And what if I make a wrong decision?”

“If I see or hear anything out of the ordinary, we’ll talk it through. But it would have to be something very unusual. Generally there aren’t any decisions that are 100 per cent right or wrong. You’ll make your decisions, and they might not be the same ones Erika would have made. If I were to make the decisions they would be different again, but your decisions are the ones that count.”

“Alright.”

“If you’re a good leader then you’ll discuss any concerns with the others. First with Henry and Christer, then with me, and we’ll raise any awkward problems at the editorial meetings.”

“I’ll do my best.”

“Good luck.”

He sat down on the sofa in the living room with his iBook on his lap and worked without any breaks all day. When he was finished, he had a rough draft of two articles totalling twenty-one pages. That part of the story focused on the deaths of Svensson and Johansson – what they were working on, why they were killed, and who the killer was. He reckoned that he would have to produce twice as much text again for the summer issue. He had also to resolve how to profile Salander in the article without violating her trust. He knew things about her that she would never want published.

Gullberg had a single slice of bread and a cup of black coffee in Frey’s café. Then he took a taxi to Artillerigatan in Östermalm. At 9.15 he introduced himself on the entry phone and was buzzed inside. He took the lift to the seventh floor, where he was received by Birger Wadensjöö, the new chief of the Section.

Wadensjöö had been one of the latest recruits to the Section around the time Gullberg retired. He wished that the decisive Fredrik was still there. Clinton had succeeded Gullberg and was the chief of the Section until 2002, when diabetes and coronary artery disease had forced him into retirement. Gullberg did not have a clear sense of what Wadensjöö was made of.

“Welcome, Evert,” Wadensjöö said, shaking hands with his former chief. “It’s good of you to take the time to come in.”

“Time is more or less all I have,” Gullberg said.

“You know how it goes. I wish we had the leisure to stay in touch with faithful old colleagues.”

Gullberg ignored the insinuation. He turned left into his old office and sat at the round conference table by the window. He assumed it was Wadensjöö who was responsible for the Chagall and Mondrian reproductions. In his day plans of Kronan and Wasa had hung on the walls. He had always dreamed about the sea, and he was in fact a naval officer, although he had spent only a few brief months at sea during his military service. There were computers now, but otherwise the room looked almost exactly as when he had left. Wadensjöö poured coffee.

“The others are on their way,” he said. “I thought we could have a few words first.”