Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The - Stieg Larsson [73]
“Together with Edith, I presume.”
“Edith was smuggled on board, hidden inside one of three hundred crates containing machinery. My job was to protect her if she should be discovered while we were still in German territorial waters, and to prevent the captain of the ship from doing anything stupid. Otherwise I was supposed to wait until we were a good distance from Germany before I let her out.”
“It sounds terrifying.”
“It sounded simple to me, but it turned into a nightmare journey. The captain was called Oskar Granath, and he was far from pleased to be made responsible for his employer’s snotty little heir. We left Hamburg around 9:00 in the evening in late June. We were just making our way out of the inner harbour when the air-raid sirens went off. A British bombing raid—the heaviest I had then experienced, and the harbour was, of course, the main target. But somehow we got through, and after an engine breakdown and a miserably stormy night in mine-filled waters we arrived the following afternoon at Karlskrona. You’re probably going to ask me what happened to the girl.”
“I think I know.”
“My father was understandably furious. I had put everything at risk with my idiotic venture. And the girl could have been deported from Sweden at any time. But I was already just as hopelessly in love with her as Lobach had been with her mother. I proposed to her and gave my father an ultimatum—either he accepted our marriage or he’d have to look for another fatted calf for the family business. He gave in.”
“But she died?”
“Yes, far too young, in 1958. She had a congenital heart defect. And it turned out that I couldn’t have children. And that’s why my brother hates me.”
“Because you married her.”
“Because—to use his own words—I married a filthy Jewish whore.”
“But he’s insane.”
“I couldn’t have put it better myself.”
CHAPTER 10
Thursday, January 9-Friday, January 31
According to the Hedestad Courier, Blomkvist’s first month out in the country was the coldest in recorded memory, or (as Vanger informed him) at least since the wartime winter of 1942. After only a week in Hedeby he had learned all about long underwear, woolly socks, and double undershirts.
He had several miserable days in the middle of the month when the temperature dropped to -35°F. He had experienced nothing like it, not even during the year he spent in Kiruna in Lapland doing his military service.
One morning the water pipes froze. Nilsson gave him two big plastic containers of water for cooking and washing, but the cold was paralysing. Ice flowers formed on the insides of the windows, and no matter how much wood he put in the stove, he was still cold. He spent a long time each day splitting wood in the shed next to the house.
At times he was on the brink of tears and toyed with taking the first train heading south. Instead he would put on one more sweater and wrap up in a blanket as he sat at the kitchen table, drinking coffee and reading old police reports.
Then the weather changed and the temperature rose steadily to a balmy 14°F.
Mikael was beginning to get to know people in Hedeby. Martin Vanger kept his promise and invited him for a meal of moose steak. His lady friend joined them for dinner. Eva was a warm, sociable, and entertaining woman. Blomkvist found her extraordinarily attractive. She was a dentist and lived in Hedestad, but she spent the weekends at Martin’s home. Blomkvist gradually learned that they had known each other for many years but that they had not started going out together until they were middle-aged. Evidently they saw no reason to marry.
“She’s actually my dentist,” said Martin with a laugh.
“And marrying into this crazy family isn’t really my thing,” Eva said, patting Martin affectionately on the knee.
Martin Vanger’s villa was furnished in black, white,