Sunday, 15.v – Monday, 16.v Superintendent1 Torsten Edklinth, Director of Constitutional Protection at the Security Police, slowly twirled his glass of red wine and listened attentively2 to the C.E.O. of Milton Security, who had called out of the blue and insisted on his coming to Sunday dinner at his place on Liding?. Armansky’s wife Ritva had made a delicious casserole. They had eaten well and talked politely about nothing in particular. Edklinth was wondering what was on Armansky’s mind. After dinner Ritva repaired to the sofa to watch T. V. and left them at the table. Armansky had begun to tell him the story of Lisbeth Salander. Edklinth and Armansky had known each other for twelve years, ever since a woman Member of Parliament had received death threats. She had reported the matter to the head of her party, and parliament’s security detail had been informed. In due course the matter came to the attention of the Security Police. At that time, Personal Protection had the smallest budget of any unit in the Security Police, but the Member of Parliament was given protection during the course of her official appearances. She was left to her own devices at the end of the working day, the very time when she was obviously more vulnerable. She began to have doubts about the ability of the Security Police to protect her. She arrived home late one evening to discover that someone had broken in, daubed sexually explicit3 epithets4 on her living-room walls, and masturbated in her bed. She immediately hired Milton Security to take over her personal protection. She did not advise S?po of this decision. The next morning, when she was due to appear at a school in T?by, there was a confrontation6 between the government security forces and her Milton bodyguards7. At that time Edklinth was acting9 deputy chief of Personal Protection. He instinctively10 disliked a situation in which private muscle was doing what a government department was supposed to be doing. He did recognize that the Member of Parliament had reason enough for complaint. Instead of exacerbating11 the issue, he invited Milton Security’s C.E.O. to lunch. They agreed that the situation might be more serious than S?po had at first assumed, and Edklinth realized that Armansky’s people not only had the skills for the job, but they were as well trained and probably better equipped too. They solved the immediate5 problem by giving Armansky’s people responsibility for bodyguard8 services, while the Security Police took care of the criminal investigation12 and paid the bill. The two men discovered that they liked each other a good deal, and they enjoyed working together on a number of assignments in subsequent years. Edklinth had great respect for Armansky, and when he was pressingly invited to dinner and a private conversation, he was willing to listen. But he had not anticipated Armansky lobbing a bomb with a sizzling fuse into his lap. “You’re telling me that the Security Police is involved in flagrant criminal activity.” “No,” Armansky said. “You misunderstand me. I’m saying that some people within the Security Police are involved in such activity. I don’t believe that this activity is sanctioned by the leadership of S.I.S., or that it has government approval.” Edklinth studied Malm’s photographs of a man getting into a car with a registration13 number that began with the letters KAB. “Dragan … this isn’t a practical joke?” “I wish it were.” The next morning Edklinth was in his office at police headquarters. He was meticulously14 cleaning his glasses. He was a grey-haired man with big ears and a powerful face, but for the moment his expression was more puzzled than powerful. He had spent most of the night worrying about how he was going to deal with the information Armansky had given him. They were not pleasant thoughts. The Security Police was an institution in Sweden that all parties (well, almost all) agreed had an indispensable value. This led each of them to distrust the group and at the same time concoct15 imaginative conspiracy16 theories about it. The scandals had undoubtedly17 been many, especially in the leftist-radical ’70s when a number of constitutional blunders had certainly occurred. But after five governmental – and roundly criticized – S?po investigations18, a new generation of civil servants had come through. They represented a younger school of activists19 recruited from the financial, weapons and fraud units of the state police. They were officers used to investigating real crimes, and not chasing political mirages20. The Security Police had been modernized21 and the Constitutional Protection Unit in particular had taken on a new, conspicuous22 role. Its task, as set out in the government’s instruction, was to uncover and prevent threats to the internal security of the nation. i.e. unlawful activity that uses violence, threat or coercion23 for the purpose of altering our form of government, inducing decision-making political entities24 or authorities to take decisions in a certain direction, or preventing individual citizens from exercising their constitutionally protected rights and liberties. In short, to defend Swedish democracy against real or presumed anti-democratic threats. They were chiefly concerned with the anarchists27 and the neo-Nazis29: the anarchists because they persisted in practising civil disobedience; the neo-Nazis because they were Nazis and so by definition the enemies of democracy. After completing his law degree, Edklinth had worked as a prosecutor30 and then twenty-one years ago joined the Security Police. He had at first worked in the field in the Personal Protection Unit, and then within the Constitutional Protection Unit as an analyst31 and administrator32. Eventually he became director of the agency, the head of the police forces responsible for the defence of Swedish democracy. He considered himself a democrat25. The constitution had been established by the parliament, and it was his job to see to it that it stayed intact. Swedish democracy is based on a single premise33: the Right to Free Speech (R.F.S.). This guarantees the inalienable right to say aloud, think and believe anything whatsoever34. This right embraces all Swedish citizens, from the crazy neo-Nazi28 living in the woods to the rock-throwing anarchist26 – and everyone in between. Every other basic right, such as the Formation of Government and the Right to Freedom of Organization, are simply practical extensions of the Right to Free Speech. On this law democracy stands or falls. All democracy has its limits, and the limits to the R.F.S. are set by the Freedom of the Press regulation (F.P.). This defines four restrictions35 on democracy. It is forbidden to publish child pornography and the depiction36 of certain violent sexual acts, regardless of how artistic37 the originator believes the depiction to be. It is forbidden to incite38 or exhort39 someone to crime. It is forbidden to defame or slander40 another person. It is forbidden to engage in the persecution41 of an ethnic42 group. Press freedom has also been enshrined by parliament and is based on the socially and democratically acceptable restrictions of society, that is, the social contract that makes up the framework of a civilized43 society. The core of the legislation has it that no person has the right to harass44 or humiliate45 another person. Since R.F.S. and F. P. are laws, some sort of authority is needed to guarantee the observance of these laws. In Sweden this function is divided between two institutions. The first is the office of the Prosecutor General, assigned to prosecute46 crimes against F. P. This did not please Torsten Edklinth. In his view, the Prosecutor General was too lenient47 with cases concerning what were, in his view, direct crimes against the Swedish constitution. The Prosecutor General usually replied that the principle of democracy was so important that it was only in an extreme emergency that he should step in and bring a charge. This attitude, however, had come under question more and more in recent years, particularly after Robert H?rdh, the general secretary of the Swedish Helsinki Committee, had submitted a report which examined the Prosecutor General’s want of initiative over a number of years. The report claimed that it was almost impossible to charge and convict anyone under the law of persecution against an ethnic group. The second institution was the Security Police division for Constitutional Protection, and Superintendent Edklinth took on this responsibility with the utmost seriousness. He thought that it was the most important post a Swedish policeman could hold, and he would not exchange his appointment for any other position in the entire Swedish legal system or police force. He was the only policeman in Sweden whose official job description was to function as a political police officer. It was a delicate task requiring great wisdom and judicial48 restraint, since experience from far too many countries has shown that a political police department could easily transform itself into the principal threat to democracy. The media and the public assumed for the most part that the main function of the Constitutional Protection Unit was to keep track of Nazis and militant49 vegans. These types of group did attract interest from the Constitutional Protection Unit, but a great many institutions and phenomena50 also fell within the bailiwick of the division. If the king, for example, or the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, took it into their hearts that parliamentary government had outlived its role and that parliament should be replaced by a dictatorship, the king or the commander-in-chief would very swiftly come under observation by the Constitutional Protection Unit. Or, to give a second example, if a group of police officers decided51 to stretch the laws so that an individual’s constitutionally guaranteed rights were infringed52, then it was the Constitutional Protection Unit’s duty to react. In such serious instances the investigation was also assumed to come under the authority of the Prosecutor General. The problem, of course, was that the Constitutional Protection Unit had only an analytical53 and investigative function, and no operations arm. That was why it was generally either the regular police or other divisions within the Security Police who stepped in when Nazis were to be arrested. In Edklinth’s opinion, this state of affairs was deeply unsatisfactory. Almost every democratic country maintains an independent constitutional court in some form, with a mandate54 to see to it that authorities do not ride roughshod over the democratic process. In Sweden the task is that of the Prosecutor General or the Parliamentary Ombudsman, who, however, can only pursue recommendations forwarded to them by other departments. If Sweden had a constitutional court, then Salander’s lawyer could instantly charge the Swedish government with violation55 of her constitutional rights. The court could then order all the documents on the table and summon anyone it pleased, including the Prime Minister, to testify until the matter was resolved. As the situation now stood, the most her lawyer could do was to file a report with the Parliamentary Ombudsman, who did not have the authority to walk into the Security Police and start demanding documents and other evidence. Over the years Edklinth had been an impassioned advocate of the establishment of a constitutional court. He could then more easily have acted upon the information he had been given by Armansky: by initiating56 a police report and handing the documentation to the court. With that an inexorable process would have been set in motion. As things stood, Edklinth lacked the legal authority to initiate57 a preliminary investigation. He took a pinch of snuff. If Armansky’s information was correct, Security Police officers in senior positions had looked the other way when a series of savage58 assaults were committed against a Swedish woman. Then her daughter was locked up in a mental hospital on the basis of a fabricated diagnosis59. Finally, they had given carte blanche to a former Soviet60 intelligence officer to commit crimes involving weapons, narcotics61 and sex trafficking. Edklinth grimaced62. He did not even want to begin to estimate how many counts of illegal activity must have taken place. Not to mention the burglary at Blomkvist’s apartment, the attack on Salander’s lawyer – which Edklinth could not bring himself to accept was a part of the same pattern – and possible involvement in the murder of Zalachenko. It was a mess, and Edklinth did not welcome the necessity to get mixed up in it. Unfortunately, from the moment Armansky invited him to dinner, he had become involved. How now to handle the situation? Technically63, that answer was simple. If Armansky’s account was true, Lisbeth Salander had at the very least been deprived of the opportunity to exercise her constitutionally protected rights and liberties. From a constitutional standpoint, this was the first can of worms. Decision-making political bodies had been induced to take decisions in a certain direction. This too touched on the core of the responsibility delegated to the Constitutional Protection Unit. Edklinth, a policeman, had knowledge of a crime and thus he had the obligation to submit a report to a prosecutor. In real life, the answer was not so simple. It was, on the contrary and to put it mildly, decidedly unsimple. Inspector64 Monica Figuerola, in spite of her unusual name, was born in Dalarna to a family that had lived in Sweden at least since the time of Gustavus Vasa in the sixteenth century. She was a woman who people usually paid attention to, and for several reasons. She was thirty-six, blue eyed, and one metre eighty-four tall. She had short, light-blonde, naturally curly hair. She was attractive and dressed in a way that she knew made her more so. And she was exceptionally fit. She had been an outstanding gymnast in her teens and almost qualified65 for the Olympic team when she was seventeen. She had given up classic gymnastics, but she still worked out obsessively66 at the gym five nights a week. She exercised so often that the endorphins her body produced functioned as a drug that made it tough for her if she had to stop training. She ran, lifted weights, played tennis, did karate67. She had cut back on bodybuilding, that extreme variant68 of bodily glorification69, some years ago. In those days she was spending two hours a day pumping iron. Even so, she trained so hard and her body was so muscular that malicious70 colleagues still called her Herr Figuerola. When she wore a sleeveless T-shirt or a summer dress, no-one could fail to notice her biceps and powerful shoulders. Her intelligence, too, intimidated71 many of her male colleagues. She had left school with top marks, studied to become a police officer at twenty, and then served for nine years in Uppsala police and studied law in her spare time. For fun, she said, she had also studied for a degree in political science. When she left patrol duty to become a criminal inspector, it was a great loss to Uppsala street safety. She worked first in the Violent Crime Division and then in the unit that specialized72 in financial crime. In 2000 she applied73 to the Security Police in Uppsala, and by 2001 she had moved to Stockholm. She first worked in Counter-Espionage, but was almost immediately hand-picked by Edklinth for the Constitutional Protection Unit. He happened to know Figuerola’s father and had followed her career over the years. When at long last Edklinth concluded that he had to act on Armansky’s information, he called Figuerola into his office. She had been at Constitutional Protection for less than three years, which meant that she was still more of a real police officer than a fully74 fledged desk warrior75. She was dressed that day in tight blue jeans, turquoise76 sandals with a low heel, and a navy blue jacket. “What are you working on at the moment, Monica?” “We’re following up on the robbery of the grocer’s in Sunne.” The Security Police did not normally spend time investigating robberies of groceries, and Figuerola was the head of a department of five officers working on political crimes. They relied heavily on computers connected to the incident reporting network of the regular police. Nearly every report submitted in any police district in Sweden passed through the computers in Figuerola’s department. The software scanned every report and reacted to 310 keywords, nigger, for example, or skinhead, swastika, immigrant, anarchist, Hitler salute77, Nazi, National Democrat, traitor78, Jew-lover, or nigger-lover. If such a keyword cropped up, the report would be printed out and scrutinized79. The Constitutional Protection Unit publishes an annual report, Threats to National Security, which supplies the only reliable statistics on political crime. These statistics are based on reports filed with local police authorities. In the case of the robbery of the shop in Sunne, the computer had reacted to three keywords – immigrant, shoulder patch, and nigger. Two masked men had robbed at gunpoint a shop owned by an immigrant. They had taken 2,780 kronor and a carton of cigarettes. One of the robbers had a mid-length jacket with a Swedish flag shoulder patch. The other had screamed “fucking nigger” several times at the manager and forced him to lie on the floor. This was enough for Figuerola’s team to initiate the preliminary investigation and to set about enquiring80 whether the robbers had a connection to the neo-Nazi gang in V?rmland, and whether the robbery could be defined as a racist81 crime. If so, the incident might be included in that year’s statistical82 compilation83, which would then itself be incorporated within the European statistics put together by the E.U.’s office in Vienna. “I’ve a difficult assignment for you,” Edklinth said. “It’s a job that could land you in big trouble. Your career might be ruined.” “I’m all ears.” “But if things go well, it could be a major step forward in your career. I’m thinking of moving you to the Constitutional Protection operations unit.” “Forgive me for mentioning this, but Constitutional Protection doesn’t have an operations unit.” “Yes, it does,” Edklinth said. “I established it this morning. At present it consists of you.” “I see,” said Figuerola hesitantly. “The task of Constitutional Protection is to defend the constitution against what we call ‘internal threats’, most often those on the extreme left or the extreme right. But what do we do if a threat to the constitution comes from within our own organization?” For the next half hour he told her what Armansky had told him the night before. “Who is the source of these claims?” Figuerola said when the story was ended. “Focus on the information, not the source.” “What I’m wondering is whether you consider the source to be reliable.” “I consider the source to be totally reliable. I’ve know this person for many years.” “It all sounds a bit … I don’t know. Improbable?” “Doesn’t it? One might think it’s the stuff of a spy novel.” “How do you expect me to go about tackling it?” “Starting now, you’re released from all other duties. Your task, your only task, is to investigate the truth of this story. You have to either verify or dismiss the claims one by one. You report directly and only to me.” “I see what you mean when you say I might land in it up to my neck.” “But if the story is true … if even a fraction of it is true, then we have a constitutional crisis on our hands.” “Where do you want me to begin?” “Start with the simple things. Start by reading the Bj?rck report. Then identify the people who are allegedly tailing this guy Blomkvist. According to my source, the car belongs to G?ran M?rtensson, a police officer living on Vittangigaten in V?llingby. Then identify the other person in the pictures taken by Blomkvist’s photographer. The younger blond man here.” Figuerola was making notes. “Then look into Gullberg’s background. I had never heard his name before, but my source believes there to be a connection between him and the Security Police.” “So somebody here at S.I.S. put out a contract on a long-ago spy using a 78-year-old man. It beggars belief.” “Nevertheless, you check it out. And your entire investigation has to be carried out without a single person other than me knowing anything at all about it. Before you take one single positive action I want to be informed. I don’t want to see any rings on the water or hear of a single ruffled84 feather.” “This is one hell of an investigation. How am I going to do all this alone?” “You won’t have to. You have only to do the first check. You come back and say that you’ve checked and didn’t find anything, then everything is fine. You come back having found that anything is as my source describes it, then we’ll decide what to do.” * Figuerola spent her lunch hour pumping iron in the police gym. Lunch consisted of black coffee and a meatball sandwich with beetroot salad, which she took back to her office. She closed her door, cleared her desk, and started reading the Bj?rck report while she ate her sandwich. She also read the appendix with the correspondence between Bj?rck and Dr Teleborian. She made a note of every name and every incident in the report that had to be verified. After two hours she got up and went to the coffee machine and got a refill. When she left her office she locked the door, part of the routine at S.I.S. The first thing she did was to check the protocol85 number. She called the registrar86 and was informed that no report with that protocol number existed. Her second check was to consult a media archive. That yielded better results. The evening papers and a morning paper had reported a person being badly injured in a car fire on Lundagatan on the date in question in 1991. The victim of the incident was a middle-aged87 man, but no name was given. One evening paper reported that, according to a witness, the fire had been started deliberately88 by a young girl. Gunnar Bj?rck, the author of the report, was a real person. He was a senior official in the immigration unit, lately on sick leave and now, very recently, deceased – a suicide. The personnel department had no information about what Bj?rck had been working on in 1991. The file was stamped Top Secret, even for other employees at S.I.S. Which was also routine. It was a straightforward89 matter to establish that Salander had lived with her mother and twin sister on Lundagatan in 1991 and spent the following two years at St Stefan’s children’s psychiatric clinic. In these sections at least, the record corresponded with the report’s contents. Peter Teleborian, now a well-known psychiatrist90 often seen on T.V., had worked at St Stefan’s in 1991 and was today its senior physician. Figuerola then called the assistant head of the personnel department. “We’re working on an analysis here in C.P. that requires evaluating a person’s credibility and general mental health. I need to consult a psychiatrist or some other professional who’s approved to handle classified information. Dr Peter Teleborian was mentioned to me, and I was wondering whether I could hire him.” It took some while before she got an answer. “Dr Teleborian has been an external consultant91 for S.I.S. in a couple of instances. He has security clearance92 and you can discuss classified information with him in general terms. But before you approach him you have to follow the bureaucratic93 procedure. Your supervisor94 must approve the consultation95 and make a formal request for you to be allowed to approach Dr Teleborian.” Her heart sank. She had verified something that could be known only to a very restricted group of people. Teleborian had indeed had dealings with S.I.S. She put down the report and focused her attention on other aspects of the information that Edklinth had given her. She studied the photographs of the two men who had allegedly followed the journalist Blomkvist from Café Copacabana on May 1. She consulted the vehicle register and found that G?ran M?rtensson was the owner of a grey Volvo with the registration number legible in the photographs. Then she got confirmation96 from the S.I.S. personnel department that he was employed there. Her heart sank again. M?rtensson worked in Personal Protection. He was a bodyguard. He was one of the officers responsible on formal occasions for the safety of the Prime Minister. For the past few weeks he had been loaned to Counter-Espionage. His leave of absence had begun on April 10, a couple of days after Zalachenko and Salander had landed in Sahlgrenska hospital. But that sort of temporary reassignment was not unusual – covering a shortage of personnel here or there in an emergency situation. Then Figuerola called the assistant chief of Counter-Espionage, a man she knew and had worked for during her short time in that department. Was G?ran M?rtensson working on anything important, or could he be borrowed for an investigation in Constitutional Protection? The assistant chief of Counter-Espionage was puzzled. Inspector Figuerola must have been misinformed. M?rtensson had not been reassigned to Counter-Espionage. Sorry. Figuerola stared at her receiver for two minutes. In Personal Protection they believed that M?rtensson had been loaned out to Counter-Espionage. Counter-Espionage said that they definitely had not borrowed him. Transfers of that kind had to be approved by the chief of Secretariat. She reached for the telephone to call him, but stopped short. If Personal Protection had loaned out M?rtensson, then the chief of Secretariat must have approved the decision. But M?rtensson was not at Counter-Espionage, which the chief of Secretariat must be aware of. And if M?rtensson was loaned out to some department that was tailing journalists, then the chief of Secretariat would have to know about that too. Edklinth had told her: no rings in the water. To raise the matter with the chief of Secretariat might be to chuck a very large stone into a pond. Berger sat at her desk in the glass cage. It was 10.30 on Monday morning. She badly needed the cup of coffee she had just got from the machine in the canteen. The first hours of her workday had been taken up entirely97 with meetings, starting with one lasting98 fifteen minutes in which Assistant Editor Fredriksson presented the guidelines for the day’s work. She was increasingly dependent on Fredriksson’s judgement in the light of her loss of confidence in Anders Holm. The second was an hour-long meeting with the chairman Magnus Borgsj?, S.M.P.’s C.F.O. Christer Sellberg, and Ulf Flodin, the budget chief. The discussion was about the slump99 in advertising100 and the downturn in single-copy sales. The budget chief and the C.F.O. were both determined101 on action to cut the newspaper’s overheads. “We made it through the first quarter of this year thanks to a marginal rise in advertising sales and the fact that two senior, highly paid employees retired102 at the beginning of the year. Those positions have not been filled,” Flodin said. “We’ll probably close out the present quarter with a small deficit103. But the free papers, Metro104 and Stockholm City, are cutting into our ad. revenue in Stockholm. My prognosis is that the third quarter will produce a significant loss.” “So how do we counter that?” Borgsj? said. “The only option is cutbacks. We haven’t laid anyone off since 2002. But before the end of the year we will have to eliminate ten positions.” “Which positions?” Berger said. “We need to work on the ‘cheese plane’ principle, shave a job here and a job there. The sports desk has six and a half jobs at the moment. We should cut that to five full-timers.” “As I understand it, the sports desk is on its knees already. What you’re proposing means that we’ll have to cut back on sports coverage105.” Flodin shrugged106. “I’ll gladly listen to other suggestions.” “I don’t have any better suggestions, but the principle is this: if we cut personnel, then we have to produce a smaller newspaper, and if we make a smaller newspaper, the number of readers will drop and the number of advertisers too.” “The eternal vicious circle,” Sellberg said. “I was hired to turn this downward trend around,” said Berger. “I see my job as taking an aggressive approach to change the newspaper and make it more attractive to readers. I can’t do that if I have to cut staff.” She turned to Borgsj?. “How long can the paper continue to bleed? How big a deficit can we take before we hit the limit?” Borgsj? pursed his lips. “Since the early ’90s S.M.P. has eaten into a great many old consolidated107 assets. We have a stock portfolio108 that has dropped in value by about 30 per cent compared to ten years ago. A large portion of these funds were used for investments in I.T. We’ve also had enormous expenses.” “I gather that S.M.P. has developed its own text editing system, the A.X.T. What did that cost?” “About five million kronor to develop.” “Why did S.M.P. go to the trouble of developing its own software? There are inexpensive commercial programs already on the market.” “Well, Erika … that may be true. Our former I.T. chief talked us into it. He persuaded us that it would be less expensive in the long run, and that S.M.P. would also be able to license109 the program to other newspapers.” “And did any of them buy it?” “Yes, as a matter of fact, a local paper in Norway bought it.” “Meanwhile,” Berger said in a dry voice, “we’re sitting here with P.C.s that are five or six years old …” “It’s simply out of the question that we invest in new computers in the coming year,” Flodin said. The discussion had gone back and forth110. Berger was aware that her objections were being systematically111 stonewalled by Flodin and Sellberg. For them costcutting was what counted, which was understandable enough from the point of view of a budget chief and a C.F.O., but unacceptable for a newly appointed editor-in-chief. What irritated her most was that they kept brushing off her arguments with patronizing smiles, making her feel like a teenager being quizzed on her homework. Without actually uttering a single inappropriate word, they displayed towards her an attitude that was so antediluvian112 it was almost comical. You shouldn’t worry your pretty head over complex matters, little girl. Borgsj? was not much help. He was biding113 his time and letting the other participants at the meeting say their piece, but she did not sense the same condescension114 from him. She sighed and plugged in her laptop. She had nineteen new messages. Four were spam. Someone wanted to sell her Viagra, cybersex with “The Sexiest Lolitas on the Net” for only $4.00 per minute, “Animal Sex, the Juiciest Horse Fuck in the Universe,” and a subscription115 to fashion.nu. The tide of this crap never receded116, no matter how many times she tried to block it. Another seven messages were those so-called “Nigeria letters” from the widow of the former head of a bank in Abu Dhabi offering her ludicrous sums of money if she would only assist with a small sum of start-up money, and other such drivel. There was the morning memo117, the lunchtime memo, three emails from Fredriksson updating her on developments in the day’s lead story, one from her accountant who wanted a meeting to check on the implications of her move from Millennium118 to S.M.P., and a message from her dental hygienist suggesting a time for her quarterly visit. She put the appointment in her calendar and realized at once that she would have to change it because she had a major editorial conference planned for that day. Finally she opened the last one, sent from [email protected]> with the subject line [Attn: Editor-in-Chief]. Slowly she put down her coffee cup. YOU WHORE! YOU THINK YOU’RE SOMETHING YOU FUCKING CUNT. DON’T THINK YOU CAN COME HERE AND THROW YOUR WEIGHT AROUND. YOU’RE GOING TO GET FUCKED IN THE CUNT WITH A SCREWDRIVER119, WHORE! THE SOONER YOU DISAPPEAR THE BETTER. Berger looked up and searched for the news editor, Holm. He was not at his desk, nor could she see him in the newsroom. She checked the sender and then picked up the telephone and called Peter Fleming, the I.T. manager. “Good morning, Peter. Who uses the address [email protected]>?” “That isn’t a valid120 address at S.M.P.” “I just got an email from that address.” “It’s a fake. Does the message contain a virus?” “I wouldn’t know. At least, the antivirus program didn’t react.” “O.K. That address doesn’t exist. But it’s very simple to fake an apparently121 legitimate122 address. There are sites on the Net that you can use to send anonymous123 mail.” “Is it possible to trace an email like that?” “Almost impossible, even if the person in question is so stupid that he sends it from his home computer. You might be able to trace the I.P. number to a server, but if he uses an account that he set up at hotmail, for instance, the trail will fizzle out.” Berger thanked him. She thought for a moment. It was not the first time she had received a threatening email or a message from a crackpot. This one was obviously referring to her new job as editor-in-chief. She wondered whether it was some lunatic who had read about her in connection with Morander’s death, or whether the sender was in the building. Figuerola thought long and hard as to what she should do about Gullberg. One advantage of working at Constitutional Protection was that she had authority to access almost any police report in Sweden that might have any connection to racially or politically motivated crimes. Zalachenko was technically an immigrant, and her job included tracking violence against persons born abroad to decide whether or not the crime was racially motivated. Accordingly she had the right to involve herself in the investigation of Zalachenko’s murder, to determine whether Gullberg, the known killer124, had a connection to any racist organization, or whether he was overheard making racist remarks at the time of the murder. She requisitioned the report. She found the letters that had been sent to the Minister of Justice and discovered that alongside the diatribe125 and the insulting personal attacks were also the words nigger-lover and traitor. By then it was 5.00 p.m. Figuerola locked all the material in her safe, shut down her computer, washed up her coffee mug, and clocked out. She walked briskly to a gym at St Eriksplan and spent the next hour doing some easy strength training. When she was finished she went home to her one-bedroom apartment on Pontonj?rgatan, showered, and ate a late but nutritious126 dinner. She considered calling Daniel Mogren, who lived three blocks down the same street. Mogren was a carpenter and bodybuilder and had been her training partner off and on for three years. In recent months they had also had sex as friends. Sex was almost as satisfying as a rigorous workout at the gym, but at a mature thirty-plus or, rather, forty-minus, Figuerola had begun to think that maybe she ought to start looking for a steady partner and a more permanent living arrangement. Maybe even children. But not with Mogren. She decided that she did not feel like seeing anyone that evening. Instead she went to bed with a history of the ancient world.
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superintendent
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| n.监督人，主管，总监；(英国)警务长 | |
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attentively
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| adv.聚精会神地；周到地；谛；凝神 | |
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explicit
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| adj.详述的，明确的；坦率的；显然的 | |
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epithets
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| n.（表示性质、特征等的）词语( epithet的名词复数 ) | |
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immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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confrontation
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| n.对抗，对峙，冲突 | |
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bodyguards
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| n.保镖，卫士，警卫员( bodyguard的名词复数 ) | |
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bodyguard
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| n.护卫，保镖 | |
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9
acting
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| n.演戏，行为，假装；adj.代理的，临时的，演出用的 | |
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10
instinctively
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| adv.本能地 | |
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11
exacerbating
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| v.使恶化，使加重( exacerbate的现在分词 ) | |
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12
investigation
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| n.调查，调查研究 | |
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13
registration
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| n.登记，注册，挂号 | |
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14
meticulously
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| adv.过细地，异常细致地；无微不至；精心 | |
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15
concoct
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| v.调合，制造 | |
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16
conspiracy
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| n.阴谋，密谋，共谋 | |
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17
undoubtedly
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| adv.确实地，无疑地 | |
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18
investigations
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| （正式的）调查( investigation的名词复数 )； 侦查； 科学研究； 学术研究 | |
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19
activists
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| n.（政治活动的）积极分子，活动家( activist的名词复数 ) | |
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20
mirages
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| n.海市蜃楼，幻景( mirage的名词复数 ) | |
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21
modernized
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| 使现代化，使适应现代需要( modernize的过去式和过去分词 )； 现代化，使用现代方法 | |
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22
conspicuous
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| adj.明眼的，惹人注目的；炫耀的，摆阔气的 | |
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23
coercion
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| n.强制，高压统治 | |
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24
entities
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| 实体对像； 实体，独立存在体，实际存在物( entity的名词复数 ) | |
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25
democrat
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| n.民主主义者，民主人士；民主党党员 | |
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26
anarchist
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| n.无政府主义者 | |
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27
anarchists
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| 无政府主义者( anarchist的名词复数 ) | |
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28
Nazi
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| n.纳粹分子，adj.纳粹党的，纳粹的 | |
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29
Nazis
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| n.（德国的）纳粹党员( Nazi的名词复数 )；纳粹主义 | |
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30
prosecutor
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| n.起诉人；检察官，公诉人 | |
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31
analyst
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| n.分析家，化验员；心理分析学家 | |
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32
administrator
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| n.经营管理者，行政官员 | |
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33
premise
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| n.前提；v.提论，预述 | |
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34
whatsoever
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| adv.（用于否定句中以加强语气）任何；pron.无论什么 | |
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35
restrictions
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| 约束( restriction的名词复数 )； 管制； 制约因素； 带限制性的条件（或规则） | |
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36
depiction
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| n.描述 | |
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37
artistic
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| adj.艺术(家)的，美术(家)的；善于艺术创作的 | |
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38
incite
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| v.引起，激动，煽动 | |
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39
exhort
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| v.规劝，告诫 | |
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40
slander
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| n./v.诽谤，污蔑 | |
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41
persecution
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| n. 迫害,烦扰 | |
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42
ethnic
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| adj.人种的，种族的，异教徒的 | |
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43
civilized
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| a.有教养的，文雅的 | |
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44
harass
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| vt.使烦恼，折磨，骚扰 | |
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45
humiliate
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| v.使羞辱，使丢脸[同]disgrace | |
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46
prosecute
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| vt.告发；进行；vi.告发，起诉，作检察官 | |
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47
lenient
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| adj.宽大的，仁慈的 | |
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48
judicial
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| adj.司法的，法庭的，审判的，明断的，公正的 | |
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49
militant
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| adj.激进的，好斗的；n.激进分子，斗士 | |
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50
phenomena
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| n.现象 | |
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51
decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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52
infringed
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| v.违反（规章等）( infringe的过去式和过去分词 )；侵犯（某人的权利）；侵害（某人的自由、权益等） | |
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53
analytical
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| adj.分析的；用分析法的 | |
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54
mandate
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| n.托管地；命令，指示 | |
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55
violation
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| n.违反(行为)，违背(行为)，侵犯 | |
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56
initiating
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| v.开始( initiate的现在分词 )；传授；发起；接纳新成员 | |
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57
initiate
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| vt.开始，创始，发动；启蒙，使入门；引入 | |
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58
savage
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| adj.野蛮的；凶恶的，残暴的；n.未开化的人 | |
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59
diagnosis
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| n.诊断，诊断结果，调查分析，判断 | |
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60
Soviet
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| adj.苏联的，苏维埃的；n.苏维埃 | |
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61
narcotics
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| n.麻醉药( narcotic的名词复数 )；毒品；毒 | |
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62
grimaced
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| v.扮鬼相，做鬼脸( grimace的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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63
technically
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| adv.专门地，技术上地 | |
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64
inspector
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| n.检查员，监察员，视察员 | |
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65
qualified
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| adj.合格的，有资格的，胜任的，有限制的 | |
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66
obsessively
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| ad.着迷般地，过分地 | |
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67
karate
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| n.空手道(日本的一种徒手武术) | |
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68
variant
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| adj.不同的，变异的；n.变体，异体 | |
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69
glorification
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| n.赞颂 | |
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70
malicious
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| adj.有恶意的，心怀恶意的 | |
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71
intimidated
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| v.恐吓；威胁adj.害怕的；受到威胁的 | |
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72
specialized
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| adj.专门的，专业化的 | |
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73
applied
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| adj.应用的；v.应用，适用 | |
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74
fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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75
warrior
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| n.勇士，武士，斗士 | |
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76
turquoise
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| n.绿宝石；adj.蓝绿色的 | |
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77
salute
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| vi.行礼，致意，问候，放礼炮；vt.向…致意，迎接，赞扬；n.招呼，敬礼，礼炮 | |
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78
traitor
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| n.叛徒，卖国贼 | |
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79
scrutinized
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| v.仔细检查，详审( scrutinize的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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80
enquiring
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| a.爱打听的，显得好奇的 | |
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81
racist
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| n.种族主义者，种族主义分子 | |
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82
statistical
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| adj.统计的，统计学的 | |
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83
compilation
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| n.编译，编辑 | |
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84
ruffled
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| adj. 有褶饰边的, 起皱的 动词ruffle的过去式和过去分词 | |
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85
protocol
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| n.议定书，草约，会谈记录，外交礼节 | |
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86
registrar
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| n.记录员，登记员；(大学的)注册主任 | |
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87
middle-aged
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| adj.中年的 | |
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88
deliberately
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| adv.审慎地；蓄意地；故意地 | |
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89
straightforward
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| adj.正直的，坦率的；易懂的，简单的 | |
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90
psychiatrist
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| n.精神病专家；精神病医师 | |
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91
consultant
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| n.顾问；会诊医师，专科医生 | |
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92
clearance
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| n.净空；许可(证)；清算；清除，清理 | |
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93
bureaucratic
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| adj.官僚的，繁文缛节的 | |
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94
supervisor
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| n.监督人，管理人，检查员，督学，主管，导师 | |
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95
consultation
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| n.咨询；商量；商议；会议 | |
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96
confirmation
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| n.证实，确认，批准 | |
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97
entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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98
lasting
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| adj.永久的，永恒的；vbl.持续，维持 | |
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99
slump
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| n.暴跌，意气消沉，（土地）下沉；vi.猛然掉落，坍塌，大幅度下跌 | |
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100
advertising
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| n.广告业；广告活动 a.广告的；广告业务的 | |
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101
determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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102
retired
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| adj.隐退的，退休的，退役的 | |
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103
deficit
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| n.亏空，亏损；赤字，逆差 | |
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104
metro
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| n.地铁；adj.大都市的；(METRO)麦德隆(财富500强公司之一总部所在地德国，主要经营零售) | |
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105
coverage
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| n.报导，保险范围，保险额，范围，覆盖 | |
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106
shrugged
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| vt.耸肩（shrug的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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107
consolidated
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| a.联合的 | |
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108
portfolio
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| n.公事包；文件夹；大臣及部长职位 | |
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109
license
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| n.执照，许可证，特许；v.许可，特许 | |
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110
forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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111
systematically
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| adv.有系统地 | |
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112
antediluvian
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| adj.史前的，陈旧的 | |
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113
biding
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| v.等待，停留( bide的现在分词 )；居住；（过去式用bided）等待；面临 | |
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114
condescension
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| n.自以为高人一等，贬低(别人) | |
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115
subscription
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| n.预订，预订费，亲笔签名，调配法，下标（处方） | |
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116
receded
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| v.逐渐远离( recede的过去式和过去分词 )；向后倾斜；自原处后退或避开别人的注视；尤指问题 | |
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117
memo
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| n.照会，备忘录；便笺；通知书；规章 | |
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118
millennium
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| n.一千年，千禧年；太平盛世 | |
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119
screwdriver
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| n.螺丝起子；伏特加橙汁鸡尾酒 | |
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120
valid
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| adj.有确实根据的；有效的；正当的，合法的 | |
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121
apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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122
legitimate
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| adj.合法的，合理的，合乎逻辑的；v.使合法 | |
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123
anonymous
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| adj.无名的；匿名的；无特色的 | |
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124
killer
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| n.杀人者，杀人犯，杀手，屠杀者 | |
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125
diatribe
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| n.抨击，抨击性演说 | |
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126
nutritious
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| adj.有营养的，营养价值高的 | |
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