Girl Who Kicked the Hornets Nest, The - Stieg Larsson [88]
Just before 6.00, as Berger was going through the headlines on page two and discussing the texts with the head of revisions, Borgsjö approached and touched her shoulder. She looked up.
“Could I have a word?”
They went together to the coffee machine in the canteen.
“I just wanted to say that I’m really very pleased with the way you took control today. I think you surprised us all.”
“I didn’t have much choice. But I may stumble a bit before I really get going.”
“We understand that.”
“We?”
“I mean the staff and the board. The board especially. But after what happened today I’m more than ever persuaded that you were the ideal choice. You came here in the nick of time, and you took charge in a very difficult situation.”
Berger almost blushed. But she had not done that since she was fourteen.
“Could I give you a piece of advice?”
“Of course.”
“I heard that you had a disagreement about a headline with Anders Holm.”
“We didn’t agree on the angle in the article about the government’s tax proposal. He inserted an opinion into the headline in the news section, which is supposed to be neutral. Opinions should be reserved for the editorial page. And while I’m on this topic … I’ll be writing editorials from time to time, but as I told you I’m not active in any political party, so we have to solve the problem of who’s going to be in charge of the editorial section.”
“Magnusson can take over for the time being,” said Borgsjö.
Erika shrugged. “It makes no difference to me who you appoint. But it should be somebody who clearly stands for the newspaper’s views. That’s where they should be aired … not in the news section.”
“Quite right. What I wanted to say was that you’ll probably have to give Holm some concessions. He’s worked at S.M.P. a long time and he’s been news chief for fifteen years. He knows what he’s doing. He can be surly sometimes, but he’s irreplaceable.”
“I know. Morander told me. But when it comes to policy he’s going to have to toe the line. I’m the one you hired to run the paper.”
Borgsjö thought for a moment and said: “We’re going to have to solve these problems as they come up.”
Giannini was both tired and irritated on Wednesday evening as she boarded the X2000 at Göteborg Central Station. She felt as if she had been living on the X2000 for a month. She bought a coffee in the restaurant car, went to her seat, and opened the folder of notes from her last conversation with Salander. Who was also the reason why she was feeling tired and irritated.
She’s hiding something. That little fool is not telling me the truth. And Micke is hiding something too. God knows what they’re playing at.
She also decided that since her brother and her client had not so far communicated with each other, the conspiracy – if it was one – had to be a tacit agreement that had developed naturally. She did not understand what it was about, but it had to be something that her brother considered important enough to conceal.
She was afraid that it was a moral issue, and that was one of his weaknesses. He was Salander’s friend. She knew her brother. She knew that he was loyal to the point of foolhardiness once he had made someone a friend, even if the friend was impossible and obviously flawed. She also knew that he could accept any number of idiocies from his friends, but that there was a boundary and it could not be infringed. Where exactly this boundary was seemed to vary from one person to another, but she knew he had broken completely with people who had previously been close friends because they had done something that he regarded as beyond the pale. And he was inflexible. The break was for ever.
Giannini understood what went on in her brother’s head. But she had no idea what Salander was up to. Sometimes she thought that there was nothing going on in there at all.
She had gathered that Salander could be moody and