be dropped like a bomb, and right now Millennium is the most credible and outspoken magazine in the country. I don't believe any other publisher would dare publish a book of this type."
"So, no book, no article?" said Blomkvist.
"I think it sounds seriously good," Eriksson said. There was a murmur of agreement from Cortez.
"The article and the book are two different things," Berger said. "For the magazine, Mikael is the publisher and responsible for the content. With regard to the book publication, the author is responsible for the content."
"I know," Svensson said. "That doesn't bother me. The moment the book is published, Mia will file a police report against everyone I name."
"That'll stir up a hell of a fuss," Cortez said.
"That's only half the story," said Svensson. "I've also been analyzing some of the networks that make money off the sex trade. We're talking about organized crime."
"And who's involved?"
"That's what's so tragic. The sex mafia is a sleazy bunch of nobodies. I don't really know what I expected when I started this research, but somehow we - at least I - had the idea that the 'mafia' was a gang in the upper echelon of society. A number of American movies on the subject have probably contributed to that image. Your story about Wennerstrom" - Svensson turned to Blomkvist - "also showed that sometimes this is actually the case. But Wennerstrom was an exception in a sense. What I've turned up is a gang of brutal and sadistic losers who can hardly read or write; they're total morons when it comes to organization and strategic thinking. There are connections to bikers and somewhat more organized groups, but in general it's a bunch of assholes who run the sex business."
"This is all made clear in your article," Berger said. "We have laws and a police force and a judicial system that we finance with millions of kronor in taxes each year to deal with the sex trade... and they can't even nail a bunch of morons."
"It's a tremendous assault on human rights, and the girls involved are so far down society's ladder that they're of no interest to the legal system. They don't vote. They can hardly speak Swedish except for the vocabulary they need to set up a trick. Of all crimes involving the sex trade, 99.99 percent are not reported to the police, and those that are hardly ever lead to a charge. This has got to be the biggest iceberg of all in the Swedish criminal world. Imagine if bank robberies were handled with the same nonchalance. It's unthinkable. Unfortunately I've come to the conclusion that this method of handling the problem would not survive for a single day if it weren't for the fact that the criminal justice system simply does not want to deal with it. Attacks on teenage girls from Tallinn and Riga are not a priority. A whore is a whore. It's part of the system."
"And everyone knows it," Nilsson said.
"So what do you all think?" Berger said.
"I like it," Blomkvist said. "We'll be sticking our necks out with that story, and that was the whole point of starting Millennium in the first place."
"That's why I'm still working at the magazine. The publisher has to jump off a cliff every now and then," Nilsson said.
Everyone laughed except Blomkvist.
"He was the only one crazy enough to take on the job of publisher," Berger said. "We're going to run this in May. And your book will come out at the same time."
"Is the book done?" Blomkvist said.
"No. I have the whole outline but only half the text. If you agree to publish the book and give me an advance, then I can work on it full-time. Almost all the research is done. All that's left are some supplementary details - actually just checking stuff I already know - and confronting the johns I'm going to hang out to dry."
"We'll produce it just like the Wennerstrom book. It'll take a week to do the layout" - Malm nodded - "and two weeks to print. We'll complete the confrontations in March and April and sum it all up in a final fifteen-page section. We'll have the manuscript ready by April 15 so we'll have time to go over all the sources."
"How will we work things with the contract and so on?"
"I've drawn up a book contract once before, but I'll probably have to have a talk with our lawyer." Berger frowned. "But I propose a short-term contract