Girl Who Kicked the Hornets Nest, The - Stieg Larsson [216]
Blomkvist burst out laughing, and then he folded the morning papers and flipped open his Ericsson to call the woman who presented She on T.V.4, who was in the middle of a lunchtime sandwich.
“Hello, darling,” Blomkvist said. “I’m assuming you’d still like dinner sometime.”
“Hi, Mikael,” she laughed. “Sorry, but you couldn’t be further from my type.”
“Still, how about coming out with me this evening to discuss a job?”
“What have you got going?”
“Erika Berger made a deal with you two years ago about the Wennerström affair. I want to make a similar deal that will work just as well.”
“I’m all ears.”
“I can’t tell you about it until we’ve agreed on the terms. I’ve got a story in the works. We’re going to publish a book and a themed issue of the magazine, and it’s going to be huge. I’m offering you an exclusive look at all the material, provided you don’t leak anything before we publish. This time the publication is extra complicated because it has to happen on a specific day.”
“How big is the story?”
“Bigger than Wennerström,” Blomkvist said. “Are you interested?”
“Are you serious? Where shall we meet?”
“How about Samir’s Cauldron? Erika’s going to sit in on the meeting.”
“What’s going with on her? Is she back at Millennium now that she’s been thrown out of S.M.P.?”
“She didn’t get thrown out. She resigned because of differences of opinion with Magnus Borgsjö.”
“He seems to be a real creep.”
“You’re not wrong there,” Blomkvist said.
*
Clinton was listening to Verdi through his earphones. Music was pretty much the only thing left in life that could take him away from dialysis machines and the growing pain in the small of his back. He did not hum to the music. He closed his eyes and followed the notes with his right hand, which hovered and seemed to have a life of its own alongside his disintegrating body.
That is how it goes. We are born. We live. We grow old. We die. He had played his part. All that remained was the disintegration.
He felt strangely satisfied with life.
He was playing for his friend Evert Gullberg.
It was Saturday, July 9. Only four days until the trial, and the Section could set about putting this whole wretched story behind them. He had had the message that morning. Gullberg had been tougher than almost anyone he had known. When you fire a 9 mm full-metal-jacketed bullet into your own temple you expect to die. Yet it was three months before Gullberg’s body gave up at last. That was probably due as much to chance as to the stubbornness with which the doctors had waged the battle for Gullberg’s life. And it was the cancer, not the bullet, that had finally determined his end.
Gullberg’s death had been painful, and that saddened Clinton. Although incapable of communicating with the outside world, he had at times been in a semi-conscious state, smiling when the hospital staff stroked his cheek or grunting when he seemed to be in pain. Sometimes he had tried to form words and even sentences, but nobody was able to understand anything he said.
He had no family, and none of his friends came to his sickbed. His last contact with life was an Eritrean night nurse by the name of Sara Kitama, who kept watch at his bedside and held his hand as he died.
Clinton realized that he would soon be following his former comrade-in-arms. No doubt about that. The likelihood of his surviving a transplant operation decreased each day. His liver and intestinal functions appeared to have declined at each examination.
He hoped to live past Christmas.
Yet he was contented. He felt an almost spiritual, giddy satisfaction that his final days had involved such a sudden and surprising return to service.
It was a boon he could not have anticipated.
The last notes of Verdi faded away just somebody opened the door to the small room in which he was resting at the Section’s headquarters on Artillerigatan.
Clinton