The Girl Who Lived Twice (Millennium #6) - David Lagercrantz Page 0,64

She had to get a grip on herself. Otherwise it would just go on like this: hesitation where action was needed, and madness in the place of calm.

Some part of what had happened on Tverskoy Boulevard had knocked her off balance. It was a fresh realization from her past. Not just the fact that she had lain there powerless when Zala came to fetch Camilla at night. There was her mother, too. What had she known? Had she too shut her eyes to the truth? This thought was constantly chafing at her, so much so that it made her frightened of herself—frightened by her indecision, frightened that she would be a useless warrior in what inevitably awaited: her life’s crucial battle.

She had known that Camilla had received a visit from Svavelsjö M.C. ever since Plague helped her to hack the surveillance cameras around the apartment on Strandvägen. She was aware that her sister was pursuing her with all the means at her disposal and that, given the chance, Camilla herself would be unlikely to hesitate. So yes, goddamnit, she had to pull herself together. She had to be strong and unwavering. But first she had to find somewhere to go.

She no longer had a home in Stockholm, so she gave that some thought and weighed the alternatives. And then she quickly read Blomkvist’s e-mail after all. It was to do with Forsell and the Sherpa, and was interesting in more ways than one. But she could not deal with it just then. She wrote back on impulse, and surprised even herself.

It wasn’t simply an indecent proposal, she thought, or even a reaction to having felt lonely, without hope. It was also…a safety precaution, because it was not unthinkable, was it, that having failed to track her down, Camilla and her henchmen would go for her close circle instead. For that reason alone it would make sense to lock Kalle Blomkvist away in a hotel room.

But then again, he was perfectly capable of locking himself up somewhere. When she got no response from him after ten, fifteen, twenty minutes, she snorted, closed her eyes and felt that she could sleep forever, and maybe she did actually drop off to sleep because when Blomkvist eventually wrote back, she jumped as if she had been attacked.

* * *

—

His sister Annika had brought him a change of clothes and shoes and driven him home to Bellmansgatan. He thought he would immediately collapse into bed. Instead he sat down at his computer and did some research on Stan Engelman. He was now seventy-four and had remarried, and he was under investigation for bribery and intimidation in connection with the sale of three hotels in Las Vegas. Although the situation was far from clear—he, of course, maintained the exact opposite—his empire seemed to be teetering. He was said to be seeking help from business contacts in Russia and Saudi Arabia.

Engelman had not made a single public comment about Nima Rita. He had, however, viciously attacked the late guide Viktor Grankin, who had employed Nima as Sirdar, and he had sued Grankin’s company, Everest Adventure Tours. They had reached a settlement before a Moscow judge, as a result of which the company went into liquidation. The rage he felt against the expedition—of which Nima Rita had been a part—was in no doubt. But that did not explain why the Sherpa had appeared in Stockholm, of all places, and Blomkvist dropped that line of enquiry for the time being; he was too tired to delve into Engelman’s many real estate transactions and love affairs and other ludicrous escapades, and instead he checked out Svante Lindberg, who was probably the person who knew best what Forsell had encountered on Everest.

Lindberg was a lieutenant general, a former coastal ranger, and presumably also an intelligence officer. He had been a close friend of Johannes Forsell since they were young. He was also an experienced mountaineer. Before Everest, he had climbed three other twenty-six-thousand-foot peaks—Broad Peak, Gasherbrum and Annapurna—and that was probably why Viktor Grankin let him and Johannes go for the summit ahead of the others when the pace of the group was slowing during the morning of May 13, 2008. But Blomkvist resolved to look more closely at the actual events on the mountain later, probably tomorrow now. For the time being he recorded that Lindberg had himself been one of the targets in the hate campaign against