the door of the building, a long-haired man wearing dark clothes. She caught only a glimpse of him, but she registered his nervous expression as he scanned the surroundings, and that was good enough for her.
She set up her IMSI-catcher and her mobile base station, and moments later another man peered out, looking very worried too. It had to be them, she was now certain of it. There were probably a number of others as well. Bound to be if they had Blomkvist in there, so she photographed the building and sent the GPS coordinates to Chief Inspector Bublanski in an encrypted message, hoping that would get the police there quickly. Then she approached the house.
Although it was windy and the sky was dark, it was a big risk: There was nowhere to hide in the open area. But she wanted to look in through the tall windows on the long side of the building, which extended all the way to the ground. She moved forward in a crouch, her weapon drawn, but the windows were tinted, she could not see a thing. Sensing danger, she began to back away. She had come too close. Turning abruptly, she checked her phone. An intercepted text:
Looking back on events later, it was difficult to say exactly what happened. To Salander it felt as if she had hesitated, just as she had on Tverskoy Boulevard. But Conny Andersson, who picked her up on the cameras at that very moment, got the impression instead of a fiercely determined figure racing up towards the forest.
* * *
—
Bogdanov spotted her on his screen but, unlike Andersson, he did not raise the alarm. He only looked on in grudging fascination as she disappeared among the trees. For some seconds she was invisible. Then there was the sound of an accelerating engine and he saw it on his screen: She was riding a motorcycle straight at them, at high speed. The bike bounced as it flew across the open space, and he assumed that was the last he would see of her.
He heard gunshots and the sound of breaking glass, and the motorcycle swerved out there in the field. But Bogdanov did not wait to see how it would end. He grabbed the car keys lying on the table next to him and hurried out, feeling an irresistible urge to break free at last, to escape from something that could not possibly end well, either for them or for Wasp.
* * *
—
Blomkvist opened his eyes and saw the blurry figure of a man right in front of him, a bloated, unshaven guy in his forties with long hair, a square jaw and bloodshot eyes. The man’s hands were shaking and he was holding a pistol that was also shaking as he looked nervously at Galinov, who was still trying to catch his breath.
“Do I shoot him?” the man shouted.
“Shoot him,” Galinov said. “We have to get out of here,” and at that Blomkvist began to kick wildly as if he could fend off the bullets with his wounded feet. He had time to see the man’s eyes narrow and the muscles tense in his forearm. He had just shouted, “No, for God’s sake, no!” when he heard the roar of a vehicle approaching at top speed. Then the man spun around.
There was shooting all around, maybe from machine guns, it was impossible to tell. The only certainty was that the vehicle was heading straight for them. There was a crash, and a shower of broken glass flew across the factory floor. A motorcycle came thundering in through a window, and on it sat a skinny figure dressed in black. She drove right into one of the men standing there and was thrown against the wall in the collision.
The gunfire continued and the flabby man with the square jaw was aiming his pistol not at him now, he was aiming it at the figure who had been thrown from her bike. But she was already up and moving. Frantic, hurried footsteps came charging towards him and Blomkvist saw Galinov’s face stiffen with fear or concentration. He heard more shooting and screams before pain and nausea overwhelmed him and he lost consciousness again.
* * *
—
Lindås, Kowalski and the Forsells had eaten an Indian takeaway, having broken off from their work. Now they were sitting in the living room and Lindås was trying to gather her wits once more. She