"I see. You spoke about co-operation..."

The P.M. said: "Yes, but first let me say that under normal circumstances I would not have dreamed of asking a journalist to come to such a meeting."

"Presumably in normal circumstances you would be doing everything you could to keep journalists away from a meeting like this."

"Quite so. But I've understood that you're driven by several factors. You have a reputation for not pulling your punches when there's corruption involved. In this case there are no differences of opinion to divide us."

"Aren't there?"

"No, not in the least. Or rather... the differences that exist might be of a legal nature, but we share an objective. If this Zalachenko club exists, it is not merely a criminal conspiracy  -  it is a threat to national security. These activities must be stopped, and those responsible must be held accountable. On that point we would be in agreement, correct?"

Blomkvist nodded.

"I've understood that you know more about this story than anyone else. We suggest that you share your knowledge. If this were a regular police investigation of an ordinary crime, the leader of the preliminary investigation could decide to summon you for an interview. But, as you can appreciate, this is an extreme state of affairs."

Blomkvist weighed the situation for a moment.

"And what do I get in return  -  if I do co-operate?"

"Nothing. I'm not going to haggle with you. If you want to publish tomorrow morning, then do so. I won't get involved in any horse-trading that might be constitutionally dubious. I'm asking you to cooperate in the interests of the country."

"In this case 'nothing' could be quite a lot," Blomkvist said. "For one thing... I'm very, very angry. I'm furious at the state and the government and Sapo and all these fucking bastards who for no reason at all locked up a twelve-year-old girl in a mental hospital until she could be declared incompetent."

"Lisbeth Salander has become a government matter," the P.M. said, and smiled. "Mikael, I am personally very upset over what happened to her. Please believe me when I say that those responsible will be called to account. But before we can do that, we have to know who they are."

"My priority is that Salander should be acquitted and declared competent."

"I can't help you with that. I'm not above the law, and I can't direct what prosecutors and the courts decide. She has to be acquitted by a court."

"O.K.," Blomkvist said. "You want my co-operation. Then give me some insight into Edklinth's investigation, and I'll tell you when and what I plan to publish."

"I can't give you that insight. That would be placing myself in the same relation to you as the Minister of Justice's predecessor once stood to the journalist Ebbe Carlsson.[8]"

"I'm not Ebbe Carlsson," Blomkvist said calmly.

"I know that. On the other hand, Edklinth can decide for himself what he can share with you within the framework of his assignment."

"Hmm," Blomkvist said. "I want to know who Evert Gullberg was."

Silence fell over the group.

"Gullberg was presumably for many years the chief of that division within S.I.S. which you call the Zalachenko club," Edklinth said.

The Prime Minister gave him a sharp look.

"I think he knows that already," Edklinth said by way of apology.

"That's correct," Blomkvist said. "He started at Sapo in the '50s. In the '60s he became chief of some outfit called the Section for Special Analysis. He was the one in charge of the Zalachenko affair."

The P.M. shook his head. "You know more than you ought to. I would very much like to discover how you came by all this information. But I'm not going to ask."

"There are holes in my story," Blomkvist said. "I need to fill them. Give me information and I won't try to compromise you."

"As Prime Minister I'm not in a position to deliver any such information. And Edklinth is on a very thin ice if he does so."

"Don't pull the wool over my eyes. I know what you want and you know what I want. If you give me information, then you'll be my sources  -  with all the enduring anonymity that implies. Don't misunderstand me... I'll tell the truth as I see it in what I publish. If you are involved, I will expose you and do everything I can to ensure that you are never re-elected. But as yet I have no reason to believe that is the case."

The Prime Minister glanced at Edklinth. After a moment he nodded. Blomkvist took it as a sign that the Prime Minister had just broken the law  -  if only of the more academic specie  -  by giving his consent to the sharing of classified information with a journalist.

"This can all be solved quite simply," Edklinth said. "I have my own investigative team and I decide for myself which colleagues to recruit for the investigation. You can't be employed by the investigation because that would mean you would be obliged to sign an oath of confidentiality. But I can hire you as an external consultant."

Berger's life had been filled with meetings and work around the clock the minute she had stepped into Morander's shoes.

It was not until Wednesday night, almost two weeks after Blomkvist had given her Cortez's research papers on Borgsjo, that she had time to address the issue. As she opened the folder she realized that her procrastination had also to do with the fact that she did not really want to face up to the problem. She already knew that however she dealt with it, calamity would be inevitable.

She arrived home in Saltsjobaden at 7.00, unusually early, and it was only when she had to turn off the alarm in the hall that she remembered her husband was not at home. She had given him an especially long kiss that morning because he was flying to Paris to deliver some lectures and would not be back until the weekend. She had no idea where he was giving the lectures, or what they were about.

She went upstairs, ran the bath, and undressed. She took Cortez's folder with her and spent the next half hour reading through the whole story. She could not help but smile. The boy was going to be a formidable reporter. He was twenty-six years old and had been at Millennium for four years, right out of journalism school. She felt a certain pride. The story had Millennium's stamp on it from beginning to end, every t was crossed, every i dotted.

But she also felt tremendously depressed. Borgsjo was a good man, and she liked him. He was soft-spoken, sharp-witted and charming, and he seemed unconcerned with prestige. Besides, he was her employer. How in God's name could he have been so bloody stupid?

She wondered whether there might be an alternative explanation or some mitigating circumstances, but she already knew it would be impossible to explain this away.

She put the folder on the windowsill and stretched out in the bath to ponder the situation.

Millennium was going to publish the story, no question. If she had still been there, she would not have hesitated. That Millennium had leaked the story to her in advance was nothing but a courtesy  -  they wanted to reduce the damage to her personally. If the situation had been reversed  -  if S.M.P. had made some damaging discovery about Millennium's chairman of the board (who happened to be herself)  -  they would not have hesitated either.

Publication would be a serious blow to Borgsjo. The damaging thing was not that his company, Vitavara Inc., had imported goods from a company on the United Nations blacklist of companies using child labour  -  and in this case slave labour too, in the form of convicts, and undoubtedly some of these convicts were political prisoners. The really damaging thing was that Borgsjo knew about all this and still went on ordering toilets from Fong Soo Industries. It was a mark of the sort of greed that did not go down well with the Swedish people in the wake of the revelations about other criminal capitalists such as Skandia's former president.

Borgsjo would naturally claim that he did not know about the conditions at Fong Soo, but Cortez had solid evidence. If Borgsjo took that tack he would be exposed as a liar. In June 1997 Borgsjo had gone to Vietnam to sign the first contracts. He had spent ten days there on that occasion and been round the company's factories. If he claimed not to have known that many of the workers there were only twelve or thirteen years old, he would look like an idiot.

Cortez had demonstrated that in 1999, the U.N. commission on child labour had added Fong Soo Industries to its list of companies that exploit child labour, and that this had then been the subject of magazine articles. Two organizations against child labour, one of them the globally recognized International Joint Effort Against Child Labour in London, had written letters to companies that had placed orders with Fong Soo. Seven letters had been sent to Vitavara Inc., and two of those were addressed to Borgsjo personally. The organization in London had been very willing to supply the evidence. And Vitavara Inc. had not replied to any of the letters.

Worse still, Borgsjo went to Vietnam twice more, in 2001 and 2004, to renew the contracts. This was the coup de grace. It would be impossible for Borgsjo to claim ignorance.

The inevitable media storm could lead only to one thing. If Borgsjo was smart, he would apologize and resign from his positions on various boards. If he decided to fight, he would be steadily annihilated.

Berger did not care if Borgsjo was or was not chairman of the board of Vitavara Inc. What mattered to her was that he was the board chairman of S.M.P. At a time when the newspaper was on the edge and a campaign of rejuvenation was under way, S.M.P. could not afford to keep him as chairman.

Berger's decision was made.

She would go to Borgsjo, show him the document, and thereby hope to persuade him to resign before the story was published.

If he dug in his heels, she would call an emergency board meeting, explain the situation, and force the board to dismiss Borgsjo. And if they did not, she would have to resign, effective immediately.

She had been thinking for so long that the bathwater was now cold. She showered and towelled herself and went to the bedroom to put on a dressing gown. Then she picked up her mobile and called Blomkvist. No answer. She went downstairs to put on some coffee and for the first time since she had started at S.M.P., she looked to see whether there was a film on T.V. that she could watch to relax.

As she walked into the living room, she felt a sharp pain in her foot. She looked down and saw blood. She took another step and pain shot through her entire foot, and she had to hop over to an antique chair to sit down. She lifted her foot and saw to her dismay that a shard of glass had pierced her heel. At first she felt faint. Then she steeled herself and took hold of the shard and pulled it out. The pain was appalling, and blood gushed from the wound.

She pulled open a drawer in the hall where she kept scarves, gloves and hats. She found a scarf and wrapped it around her foot and tied it tight. That was not going to be enough, so she reinforced it with another improvised bandage. The bleeding had apparently subsided.

She looked at the bloodied piece of glass in amazement. How did this get here? Then she discovered more glass on the hall floor. Jesus Christ... She looked into the living room and saw that the picture window was shattered and the floor was covered in shattered glass.

She went back to the front door and put on the outdoor shoes she had kicked off as she came home. That is, she put on one shoe and stuck the toes of her injured foot into the other, and hopped into the living room to take stock of the damage.

Then she found the brick in the middle of the living-room floor.

She limped over to the balcony door and went out to the garden. Someone had sprayed in metre-high letters on the back wall:

WHORE

It was just after 9.00 in the evening when Figuerola held the car door open for Blomkvist. She went around the car and got into the driver's seat.

"Should I drive you home or do you want to be dropped off somewhere?"

Blomkvist stared straight ahead. "I haven't got my bearings yet, to be honest. I've never had a confrontation with a prime minister before."

Figuerola laughed. "You played your cards very well," she said. "I would never have guessed you were such a good poker player."

"I meant every word."

"Of course, but what I meant was that you pretended to know a lot more than you actually do. I realized that when I worked out how you identified me."

Blomkvist turned and looked at her profile.

"You wrote down my car registration when I was parked on the hill outside your building. You made it sound as if you knew what was being discussed at the Prime Minister's secretariat."

"Why didn't you say anything?" Blomkvist said.

She gave him a quick look and turned on to Grev Turegatan. "The rules of the game. I shouldn't have picked that spot, but there wasn't anywhere else to park. You keep a sharp eye on your surroundings, don't you?"

"You were sitting with a map spread out on the front seat, talking on the telephone. I took down your registration and ran a routine check. I check out every car that catches my attention. I usually draw a blank. In your case I discovered that you worked for Sapo."

"I was following Mårtensson."

"Aha. So simple."

"Then I discovered that you were tailing him using Susanne Linder at Milton Security."

"Armansky's detailed her to keep an eye on what goes on around my apartment."

"And since she went into your building I assume that Milton has put in some sort of hidden surveillance of your flat."

"That's right. We have an excellent film of how they break in and go through my papers. Mårtensson carries a portable photocopier with him. Have you identified Mårtensson's sidekick?"