The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Millennium #1)

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Millennium #1) Page 21

After the war Greger Vanger became a secondary-school teacher and eventually the headmaster of the Hedestad preparatory school. Vanger thought that he no longer belonged to any party after the war and had given up Nazism. He died in 1974, and it wasn't until he went through his brother's correspondence that he learned that in the fifties Greger had joined the politically ineffectual but totally crackpot sect called the Nordic National Party. He had remained a member until his death.

Quote, Henrik Vanger, tape 2, 04167:

Consequently, three of my brothers were politically insane. How sick were they in other respects?

The only brother worthy of a measure of empathy in Vanger's eyes was the sickly Gustav, who died of lung disease in 1955. Gustav had never been interested in politics, and he seemed to be some sort of misanthropic artistic soul, with absolutely no interest in business or working in the Vanger Corporation.

Blomkvist asked Vanger: "Now you and Harald are the only ones left. Why did he move back to Hedeby?"

"He moved home in 1979. He owns that house."

"It must feel strange living so close to a brother that you hate."

"I don't hate my brother. If anything, I may pity him. He's a complete idiot, and he's the one who hates me."

"He hates you?"

"Precisely. I think that's why he came back here. So that he could spend his last years hating me at close quarters."

"Why does he hate you?"

"Because I got married."

"I think you're going to have to explain that."

Vanger had lost contact with his older brothers early on. He was the only brother to show an aptitude for business - he was his father's last hope. He had no interest in politics and steered clear of Uppsala. Instead he studied economics in Stockholm. After he turned eighteen he spent every break and summer holiday working at one of the offices within the Vanger Corporation or working with the management of one of its companies. He became familiar with all the labyrinths of the family business.

On 10 June, 1941 - in the midst of an all-out war - Vanger was sent to Germany for a six-week visit at the Vanger Corporation business offices in Hamburg. He was only twenty-one and the Vanger's German agent, a company veteran by the name of Hermann Lobach, was his chaperone and mentor.

"I won't tire you with all the details, but when I went there, Hitler and Stalin were still good friends and there wasn't yet an Eastern Front. Everyone still believed that Hitler was invincible. There was a feeling of... both optimism and desperation. I think those are the right words. More than half a century later, it's still difficult to put words to the mood. Don't get me wrong - I was not a Nazi, and in my eyes Hitler seemed like some absurd character in an operetta. But it would have been almost impossible not to be infected by the optimism about the future, which was rife among ordinary people in Hamburg. Despite the fact that the war was getting closer, and several bombing raids were carried out against Hamburg during the time I was there, the people seemed to think it was mostly a temporary annoyance - that soon there would be peace and Hitler would establish his Neuropa. People wanted to believe that Hitler was God. That's what it sounded like in the propaganda."

Vanger opened one of his many photograph albums.

"This is Lobach. He disappeared in 1944, presumably lost in some bombing raid. We never knew what his fate was. During my weeks in Hamburg I became close to him. I was staying with him and his family in an elegant apartment in a well-to-do neighbourhood of Hamburg. We spent time together every day. He was no more a Nazi than I was, but for convenience he was a member of the party. His membership card opened doors and facilitated opportunities for the Vanger Corporation - and business was precisely what we did. We built freight wagons for their trains - I've always wondered whether any of our wagons were destined for Poland. We sold fabric for their uniforms and tubes for their radio sets - although officially we didn't know what they were using the goods for. And Lobach knew how to land a contract; he was entertaining and good-natured. The perfect Nazi. Gradually I began to see that he was also a man who was desperately trying to hide a secret.

"In the early hours of June 22 in 1941, Lobach knocked on the door of my bedroom. My room was next to his wife's bedroom, and he signalled me to be quiet, get dressed, and come with him. We went downstairs and sat in the smoking salon. Lobach had been up all night. He had the radio on, and I realised that something serious had happened. Operation Barbarossa had begun. Germany had invaded the Soviet Union on Midsummer Eve." Vanger gestured in resignation. "Lobach took out two glasses and poured a generous aquavit for each of us. He was obviously shaken. When I asked him what it all meant, he replied with foresight that it meant the end for Germany and Nazism. I only half believed him - Hitler seemed undefeatable, after all - but Lobach and I drank a toast to the fall of Germany. Then he turned his attention to practical matters."

Blomkvist nodded to signal that he was still following the story.

"First, he had no possibility of contacting my father for instructions, but on his own initiative he had decided to cut short my visit to Germany and send me home. Second, he asked me to do something for him."

Vanger pointed to a yellowed portrait of a dark-haired woman, in three-quarter view.

"Lobach had been married for forty years, but in 1919 he met a wildly beautiful woman half his age, and he fell hopelessly in love with her. She was a poor, simple seamstress. Lobach courted her, and like so many other wealthy men, he could afford to install her in an apartment a convenient distance from his office. She became his mistress. In 1921 she had a daughter, who was christened Edith."

"Rich older man, poor young woman, and a love child - that can't have caused much of a scandal in the forties," Blomkvist said.

"Absolutely right. If it hadn't been for one thing. The woman was Jewish, and consequently Lobach was the father of a Jew in the midst of Nazi Germany. He was what they called a 'traitor to his race.'"

"Ah... That does change the situation. What happened?"

"Edith's mother had been picked up in 1939. She disappeared, and we can only guess what her fate was. It was known, of course, that she had a daughter who was not yet included on any transport list, and who was now being sought by the department of the Gestapo whose job it was to track down fugitive Jews. In the summer of 1941, the week that I arrived in Hamburg, Edith's mother was somehow linked to Lobach, and he was summoned for an interview. He acknowledged the relationship and his paternity, but he stated that he had no idea where his daughter might be, and he had not had any contact with her in ten years."

"So where was the daughter?"

"I had seen her every day in the Lobachs' home. A sweet and quiet twenty-year-old girl who cleaned my room and helped serve dinner. By 1937 the persecution of the Jews had been going on for several years, and Edith's mother had begged Lobach for help. And he did help - Lobach loved his illegitimate child just as much as his legitimate children. He hid her in the most unlikely place he could think of - right in front of everyone's nose. He had arranged for counterfeit documents, and he had taken her in as their housekeeper."

"Did his wife know who she was?"

"No, it seemed she had no idea. It had worked for four years, but now Lobach felt the noose tightening. It was only a matter of time before the Gestapo would come knocking on the door. Then he went to get his daughter and introduced her to me as such. She was very shy and didn't even dare look me in the eye. She must have been up half the night waiting to be called. Lobach begged me to save her life."

"How?"

"He had arranged the whole thing. I was supposed to be staying another three weeks and then to take the night train to Copenhagen and continue by ferry across the sound - a relatively safe trip, even in wartime. But two days after our conversation a freighter owned by the Vanger Corporation was to leave Hamburg headed for Sweden. Lobach wanted to send me with the freighter instead, to leave Germany without delay. The change in my travel plans had to be approved by the security service; it was a formality, but not a problem. But Lobach wanted me on board that freighter."

"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 0 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 0 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, and chrome. There were expensive designer pieces that would have delighted the connoisseur Christer Malm. The kitchen was equipped to a professional chef's standard. In the living room there was a high-end stereo with an impressive collection of jazz records from Tommy Dorsey to John Coltrane. Martin Vanger had money, and his home was both luxurious and functional. It was also impersonal. The artwork on the walls was reproductions and posters, of the sort found in IKEA. The bookshelves, at least in the part of the house that Blomkvist saw, housed a Swedish encyclopedia and some coffee table books that people might have given him as Christmas presents, for want of a better idea. All in all, he could discern only two personal aspects of Martin Vanger's life: music and cooking. His 3,000 or so LPs spoke for the one and the other could be deduced from the fact of Martin's stomach bulging over his belt.

The man himself was a mixture of simplicity, shrewdness, and amiability. It took no great analytical skill to conclude that the corporate CEO was a man with problems. As they listened to "Night in Tunisia," the conversation was devoted to the Vanger Corporation, and Martin made no secret of the fact that the company was fighting for survival. He was certainly aware that his guest was a financial reporter whom he hardly knew, yet he discussed the internal problems of his company so openly that it seemed reckless. Perhaps he assumed that Blomkvist was one of the family since he was working for his great-uncle; and like the former CEO, Martin took the view that the family members only had themselves to blame for the situation in which the company found itself. On the other hand, he seemed almost amused by his family's incorrigible folly. Eva nodded but passed no judgement of her own. They had obviously been over the same ground before.

Martin accepted the story that Blomkvist had been hired to write a family chronicle, and he inquired how the work was going. Blomkvist said with a smile that he was having the most trouble remembering the names of all the relatives. He asked if he might come back to do an interview in due course. Twice he considered turning the conversation to the old man's obsession with Harriet's disappearance. Vanger must have pestered her brother with his theories, and Martin must realise that if Blomkvist was going to write about the Vangers, he could not ignore the fact that one family member had vanished in dramatic circumstances. But Martin showed no sign of wanting to discuss the subject.