name of the song, but she took the words as prophetic.
CHAPTER 30
Thursday, April 7
Blomkvist looked at the entrance door of Fiskargatan 9. It was one of Stockholm's most exclusive addresses. He put the key in the lock and it turned perfectly. The list of residents in the lobby was no help. Blomkvist assumed it would be mostly corporate apartments, but there seemed to be one or two private residences among them. It hardly surprised him that Salander's name was not listed, yet it still seemed unlikely that this would be her hideout.
He walked up floor by floor, reading the nameplates on the doors. None of them rang a bell. Then he got to the top floor and read
V. KULLA.
Blomkvist slapped his forehead. He had to smile. The choice of name may not have been intended to make fun of him personally; it was more likely some private ironic reflection of Salander's - but where else should Kalle Blomkvist, nicknamed for an Astrid Lindgren character, look for her than at Pippi Longstocking's Villa Villekulla?
He rang the doorbell and waited a minute. Then he took out the keys and unfastened the dead bolt and the bottom lock.
The instant he opened the door, the burglar alarm device was activated.
Salander's mobile began beeping. She was near Glanshammar just outside orebro. She braked and pulled onto the shoulder. She took her Palm from her jacket pocket and plugged it into her phone.
Fifteen seconds earlier someone had opened the door to her apartment. The alarm was not connected to any security company. Its only purpose was to alert her that someone had broken in or had opened the door in some other way. After thirty seconds an alarm bell would go off and the uninvited visitor would get an unpleasant surprise in the form of a paint bomb hidden in a fake fuse box next to the door. She smiled in anticipation and counted down the seconds.
Blomkvist stared in frustration at the alarm display by the door. For some reason he hadn't even thought that the apartment might have an alarm. He watched the digital clock counting down. Millennium's alarm was triggered if someone failed to key in the correct four-digit code within thirty seconds, and shortly thereafter a couple of muscular guys from a security company would come through the door.
His first impulse was to close the door and make a quick exit from the building. But he just stood there, frozen to the spot.
Four digits. Impossible to guess the code at random.
25-24-23-22...
Damned Pippi Long...
19-18...
What code would you use?
15-14-13...
He felt his panic growing.
10-9-8...
Then he raised his hand and desperately punched in the only number he could think of: 9277. The numbers that corresponded to the letters W-A-S-P on the keypad.
To his astonishment the countdown stopped with six seconds to go. Then the alarm beeped one last time before the display was reset to zero and a green light came on.
Salander opened her eyes wide. She thought she had to be seeing things and actually shook her PDA, which she realized was irrational. The countdown had stopped six seconds before the paint bomb was supposed to explode. And a second later the display reset to zero.
Impossible.
No other person in the world knew the code.
How could it be possible? The police? No. Zala? Inconceivable.
She dialled a number on her mobile and waited for the surveillance camera to connect and begin to send low-resolution images through.
The camera was hidden in what looked like a smoke detector in the hall ceiling, and it took a low-res photograph every second. She played back the sequence from zero, the moment the door was opened and the alarm activated. Then a lopsided smile spread across her face as she looked down at Mikael Blomkvist, who for half a minute acted out a jerky pantomime before he finally punched in the code and then leaned on the doorjamb looking as though he had just avoided having a heart attack.
Kalle Fucking Blomkvist had tracked her down.
He had the keys she had dropped on Lundagatan. He was smart enough to remember that Wasp was her handle on the Net. And if he had found the apartment, then he had probably also worked out that it was owned by Wasp Enterprises. As she watched he began to move jerkily down the hall and disappeared from the camera's view.
Shit. How could I have been so predictable? And why did I drop those keys?... Now her every secret lay open to