There was a knock at the door. Gullberg looked up to see a smartly dressed man of about sixty and a younger man in jeans and a tweed jacket.
"Come in... Evert Gullberg, this is Jonas Sandberg. He's been working here for four years and is in charge of operations. He's the one I told you about. And Georg Nystrom you know."
"Hello, Georg," Gullberg said.
They all shook hands. Then Gullberg turned to Sandberg.
"So where do you come from?"
"Most recently from Goteborg," Sandberg said lightly. "I went to see him."
"Zalachenko?"
Sandberg nodded.
"Have a seat, gentlemen," Wadensjoo said.
"Bjorck," Gullberg said, frowning when Wadensjoo lit a cigarillo. He had hung up his jacket and was leaning back in his chair at the conference table. Wadensjoo glanced at Gullberg and was struck by how thin the old man had become.
"He was arrested for violation of the prostitution laws last Friday," Nystrom said. "The matter has gone to court, but in effect he confessed and slunk home with his tail between his legs. He lives out in Smådalaro, but he's on disability leave. The press haven't picked up on it yet."
"He was once one of the very best we had here in the Section," Gullberg said. "He played a key role in the Zalachenko affair. What's happened to him since I retired?"
"Bjorck is probably one of the very few internal colleagues who left the Section and went back to external operations. He was out flitting around even in your day."
"Well, I do recall that he needed a little rest and wanted to expand his horizons. He was on leave of absence from the Section for two years in the '80s when he worked as intelligence attache. He had worked like a fiend with Zalachenko, practically around the clock from 1976 on, and I thought that he needed a break. He was gone from 1985 to 1987, when he came back here."
"You could say that he quit the Section in 1994 when he went over to the external organization. In 1996 he became assistant chief of the Immigration Division and ended up in a stressful position. His official duties took up a great deal of his time. Naturally he has stayed in contact with the Section throughout, and I can also say that we had conversations with him about once a month until recently."
"So he's ill?"
"It's nothing serious, but very painful. He has a slipped disc. He's had recurring trouble with it over the past few years. Two years ago he was on sick leave for four months. And then he was taken ill again in August last year. He was supposed to start work again at new year, but his sick leave was extended and now it's a question of waiting for an operation."
"And he spent his sick leave running around with prostitutes?" Gullberg said.
"Yes. He's not married, and his dealings with whores appear to have been going on for many years, if I've understood correctly," said Sandberg, who had been silent for almost half an hour. "I've read Dag Svensson's manuscript."
"I see. But can anyone explain to me what actually happened?"
"As far as we can tell, it was Bjorck who set this whole mess rolling. How else can we explain the report from 1991 ending up in the hands of Advokat Bjurman?"
"Another man who spends his time with prostitutes?" Gullberg said.
"Not as far as we know, and he wasn't mentioned in Svensson's material. He was, however, Lisbeth Salander's guardian."
Wadensjoo sighed. "You could say it was my fault. You and Bjorck arrested Salander in 1991, when she was sent to the psychiatric hospital. We expected her to be away for much longer, but she became acquainted with a lawyer, Advokat Palmgren, who managed to spring her loose. She was then placed with a foster family. By that time you had retired."
"And then what happened?"
"We kept an eye on her. In the meantime her twin sister, Camilla, was placed in a foster home in Uppsala. When they were seventeen, Lisbeth started digging into her past. She was looking for Zalachenko, and she went through every public register she could find. Somehow - we're not sure how it happened - she found out that her sister knew where Zalachenko was."
"Was it true?"
Wadensjoo shrugged. "I have no idea. The sisters had not seen each other for several years when Lisbeth Salander ran Camilla to ground and tried to persuade her to tell her what she knew. It ended in a