The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets Nest Page 0,254

Box companies and acted as gatekeepers for a number of shady figures in Europe. The firm was barely making ends meet when Salander selected Jeremy MacMillan to administer the $2.4 billion she had stolen from the collapsing empire of the Swedish financier Hans-Erik Wennerstrom.

MacMillan was a crook, no doubt about it, but she regarded him as her crook, and he had surprised himself by being impeccably honest in his dealings with her. She had first hired him for a simple task. For a modest fee he had set up a string of P.O. Box companies for her to use; she put a million dollars into each of them. She had contacted him by telephone and had been nothing more than a voice from afar. He never tried to discover where the money came from. He had done what she asked and took 5 per cent commission. A little while later she had transferred a large sum of money that he was to use to set up a corporation, Wasp Enterprises, which then acquired a substantial apartment in Stockholm. His dealings with Salander were becoming quite lucrative, even if it was still only quite modest pickings.

Two months later she had paid a visit to Gibraltar. She had called him and suggested dinner in her room at the Rock Hotel, which was, if not the biggest hotel in Gibraltar, then certainly the most famous. He was not sure what he had expected, but he could not believe that his client was this doll-like girl who looked as if she were in her early teens. He thought he was the butt of some outlandish practical joke.

He soon changed his mind. The strange young woman talked with him impersonally, without ever smiling or showing any warmth. Or coolness, for that matter. He had sat paralysed as, over the course of a few minutes, she obliterated the professional facade of sophisticated respectability that he was always so careful to maintain.

"What is it that you want?" he had asked.

"I've stolen a sum of money," she replied with great seriousness. "I need a crook who can administer it."

He had stared at her, wondering whether she was deranged, but politely he played along. She might be a possible mark for a con game that could bring in a small income. Then he had sat as if struck by lightning when she explained who she had stolen the money from, how she did it, and what the amount was. The Wennerstrom affair was the hottest topic of conversation in the world of international finance.

"I see."

The possibilities flew through his head.

"You're a skilled business lawyer and stockbroker. If you were an idiot you would never have got the jobs you did in the '80s. However, you behaved like an idiot and managed to get yourself fired."

He winced.

"In the future I will be your only client."

She had looked at him with the most ingenuous expression he had ever seen.

"I have two conditions. The first is that you never ever commit a crime or get mixed up in anything that could create problems for us and focus the authorities' attention on my companies and accounts. The second is that you never lie to me. Never ever. Not a single time. And not for any reason. If you lie to me, our business relationship will terminate instantly, and if you make me cross enough I will ruin you."

She poured him a glass of wine.

"There's no reason to lie to me. I already know everything worth knowing about your life. I know how much you make in a good month and a bad month. I know how much you spend. I know that you never really have enough money. I know that you owe £120,000 in both long-term and short-term debts, and that you always have to take risks and skim some money to make the loan payments. You wear expensive clothes and try to keep up appearances, but in reality you've gone to the dogs and haven't bought a new sports jacket in several months. But you did take an old jacket in to have the lining mended two weeks ago. You used to collect rare books but have been gradually selling them off. Last month you sold an early edition of Oliver Twist for £760."

She stopped talking and fixed him with her gaze. He swallowed hard.

"Last week you actually made a killing. A quite clever fraud perpetrated against that widow you represent. You ripped her off £6,000, which she'll probably never miss."

"How