The Girl Who Lived Twice (Millennium #6) - David Lagercrantz Page 0,111
as if he had something important to tell her.
“Lisbeth worries me,” she said. “You should be worried about her too, Mikael. The clock is ticking. Tick, tock. But you’ve probably lost track of time, haven’t you? I can tell you that it’s already gone eleven, and Lisbeth would have been in touch by now if she wanted to help you. But we haven’t heard a word.”
She smiled again.
“Maybe she’s not all that keen on you after all, Mikael. Perhaps she’s jealous of all your other women. Of your little Catrin.”
He shuddered. “What have you done to her?”
“Nothing, my dear, nothing. Nothing yet. But it looks as if Lisbeth would rather see you dead than cooperate with us. She’s sacrificing you—the same way she’s sacrificed so many others.”
Blomkvist closed his eyes and tried to trawl his mind for something he knew he wanted to say, but all that was there was his pain. “It’s you who are sacrificing me,” he said. “Not Lisbeth.”
“Us? No, no, Lisbeth was made an offer which she did not accept, and I have nothing against that. I’ll be happy for her to discover what it feels like to lose someone you’re close to. Weren’t you important to her once?”
Again she ran her hand over his hair, and in that second he saw something unexpected in Camilla’s face. He saw a similarity to Salander, not in appearance maybe, rather the speechless rage in her eyes, and he managed to stammer:
“The ones…”
He struggled to master the pain.
“What, Mikael?”
“…who mattered to her were her mother, and Holger, and she’s already lost them,” he said, and in that moment he realized what he had been searching for.
“What are you trying to say?”
“That Lisbeth knows perfectly well what it is to lose someone close, while you, Camilla—”
“While I…”
“…lost something worse.”
“And what would that be?”
He spat it out through gritted teeth:
“A piece of yourself.”
“What do you mean?” Fury flashed in her eyes.
“You lost both your mother and your father. A mother who did not want to see what was being done to you, and a father…you loved…but who took advantage of you, and I believe—”
“What the hell do you believe?”
He shut his eyes and tried grimly to focus. “That you became the biggest victim in the family. Everyone let you down.”
Camilla grabbed him by the throat:
“What has Lisbeth put into your head?”
He was having trouble breathing, not only because of Camilla’s hand. It felt as if the fire was creeping closer and he was sure that he had made a mistake. He had wanted to awaken something inside her. But he had only managed to provoke her fury.
“Answer me!” she yelled.
“Lisbeth has said that…” He gasped for breath.
“What?”
“That she should have understood why Zala came to you at night, but she was so focused on protecting her mother that it didn’t register.”
Camilla took her hands from his throat and kicked the stretcher so that his feet hit the side of the furnace.
“Is that what she told you?”
His pulse was racing. “She didn’t understand.”
“Bullshit! She knew all along, of course she did,” Camilla shouted.
“Calm down, Kira,” Galinov said.
“Never,” she hissed. “Lisbeth’s been telling him barefaced lies.”
“She didn’t know,” Mikael stuttered.
“So that’s what she’s saying? Do you want to know what really happened with Zala? Do you? Zala made me a woman. That’s what he always said.” Camilla hesitated and seemed to be searching for words. “He made me a woman, just as I’m making a man of you now, Mikael,” she said, leaning forward and looking straight at him, and if at first there had been only rage and revenge in her eyes, now they changed.
There was a glimpse of something vulnerable there, and he imagined that a connection had formed between them, perhaps she recognized something of herself in his defencelessness. But he could have been mistaken. The very next second she turned and walked out, shouting something in Russian that sounded like an order.
Now Blomkvist was alone with the man whom he knew only as Ivan, and all he could do was try to endure, and not look into the flames.
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MAY 13, 2008
When Klara saw the climbers in the snowy fog, she collapsed and rolled down the slope, away from Nima Rita, and fell against a body lying there, a man. Was he dead? No, no, he was alive, he moved. He looked at her, and shook his head. He was wearing an oxygen mask. She could not see who it was. But he patted her shoulder.