Girl Who Kicked the Hornets Nest, The - Stieg Larsson [48]
He was never going to be able to tell anyone about his triumphs, not even in posthumous memoirs. And there was the ever-present anxiety that the Enemy would notice his overseas journeys, that he might attract attention, that he might involuntarily lead the Russians to Zalachenko. In that respect Zalachenko was his worst enemy.
During the first year, the defector had lived in an anonymous apartment owned by the Section. He did not exist in any register or in any public document. Those within the Zalachenko unit thought they had plenty of time before they had to plan his future. Not until the spring of 1978 was he given a passport in the name of Karl Axel Bodin, along with a laboriously crafted personal history – a fictitious but verifiable background in Swedish records.
By that time it was already too late. Zalachenko had gone and fucked that stupid whore Agneta Sofia Salander, née Sjölander, and he had heedlessly told her his real name – Zalachenko. Gullberg began to believe that Zalachenko was not quite right in the head. He suspected that the Russian defector wanted to be exposed. It was as if he needed a platform. How else to explain the fact that he had been so fucking stupid.
There were whores, there were periods of excessive drinking, and there were incidents of violence and trouble with bouncers and others. On three occasions Zalachenko was arrested by the Swedish police for drunkenness and twice more in connection with fights in bars. Every time the Section had to intervene discreetly and bail him out, seeing to it that documents disappeared and records were altered. Gullberg assigned Björck to babysit the defector almost around the clock. It was not an easy job, but there was no alternative.
Everything could have gone fine. By the early ’80s Zalachenko had calmed down and begun to adapt. But he never gave up the whore Salander – and worse, he had become the father of Camilla and Lisbeth Salander.
Lisbeth Salander.
Gullberg pronounced the name with displeasure.
Ever since the girls were nine or ten, he had had a bad feeling about Lisbeth. He did not need a psychiatrist to tell him that she was not normal. Björck had reported that she was vicious and aggressive towards her father and that she seemed to be not in the least afraid of him. She did not say much, but she expressed in a thousand other ways her dissatisfaction with how things stood. She was a problem in the making, but how gigantic this problem would become was something Gullberg could never have imagined in his wildest dreams. What he most feared was that the situation in the Salander family would give rise to a social welfare report that named Zalachenko. Time and again he urged the man to cut his ties and disappear from their lives. Zalachenko would give his word, and then would always break it. He had other whores. He had plenty of whores. But after a few months he was always back with the Salander woman.
That bastard Zalachenko. An intelligence agent who let his cock rule any part of his life was obviously not a good intelligence agent. It was as though the man thought himself above all normal rules. If he could have screwed the whore without beating her up every time, that would have been one thing, but Zalachenko was guilty of repeated assault against his girlfriend. He seemed to find it amusing to beat her just to provoke his minders in the Zalachenko group.
Gullberg had no doubt that Zalachenko was a sick bastard, but he was in no position to pick and choose among defecting G.R.U. agents. He had only one, a man very aware of his value to Gullberg.
The Zalachenko unit had taken on the role of clean-up patrol in that sense. It was undeniable. Zalachenko knew that he could take liberties and that they would resolve whatever problems there might be. When it came to Agneta Sofia Salander, he exploited his hold over them to the maximum.
Not that there were not warnings. When Salander was twelve, she had stabbed Zalachenko. His wounds had not been life-threatening, but he was taken to St Göran’s hospital and the group had more of a mop-up