The Girl in the Eagle's Talons: A Lisbeth Salander Novel
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Synopsis
“Lisbeth Salander is back—and maybe better than ever. Karin Smirnoff’s take is both respectful of the past and ready for the future—altogether remarkable.” —Lee Child, author of No Plan B
“An absolutely brilliant continuation of the series: exciting plot, plenty of action, and a sensitive portrayal of complicated relationships—where the new character Svala is one of the highlights.” —Femina
Change is coming to Sweden’s far north: its untapped natural resources are sparking a gold rush, with the criminal underworld leading the charge. But it’s not the prospect of riches that brings Lisbeth Salander to the small town of Gasskas. She has been named guardian to her niece Svala, whose mother has disappeared. Two things soon become clear: Svala is a remarkably gifted teenager—and she’s being watched.
Mikael Blomkvist is also heading north. He has seen better days. Millennium magazine is in its final print issue, and relations with his daughter are strained. Worse still, there are troubling rumors surrounding the man she’s about to marry. When the truth behind the whispers explodes into violence, Salander emerges as Blomkvist’s last hope.
A pulse-pounding thriller, The Girl in the Eagle’s Talons sees Salander and Blomkvist navigating a world of conspiracy and betrayal, old enemies and new friends, ice-bound wilderness and the global corporations that threaten to tear it apart.
Release date: August 29, 2023
Publisher: Knopf
Print pages: 369
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The Girl in the Eagle's Talons: A Lisbeth Salander Novel
Karin Smirnoff
1
The Cleaner keeps an eye on his watch. From the moment he baits the feeding tray with hunks of meat it takes forty-one seconds for the first eagle, a female, to land.
He can never tell exactly where it has come from. It could have been perched in a nearby tree. Or sailing a couple of thousand feet above. With eyesight like that, two hundred times sharper than a human’s, it can zoom in on prey from several miles away. He is sitting fifty yards from the bait, well concealed in his hiding place, following the meal through his binoculars.
Fourteen across, “raptor treats,” ten letters. Eagle candy. The tenderness he feels for the birds is not fatherly love, for what does he know of that? And yet he cannot help thinking of them as his children.
He thinks about them before he goes to sleep. The moment he wakes up. As he goes about all the essential chores like chopping wood, preparing their meals or lighting the fire, he thinks about them. Have they mated? Have the young survived? Can they find enough to eat? Will they make it through the winter? Yes. With his help and a decent year for voles, they will pull through.
He rubs his knuckles over his eyes. The sun has risen higher now and is warming his back. Maybe for the last time this autumn. It doesn’t matter. This house is in a corner of the world forgotten by humankind. Although “house” is a bit of an exaggeration. A log hut that has stood empty since the last foresters left in the early 1960s and the area was designated a national park.
This is rugged country with its irregular structure of ancient forest, meres, bogs and mountains. There is no proper road leading to it, either. Apart from animal paths the only visible markers are the faint traces of an old forest track that nature is busily reclaiming. The only way to get there is on foot or by quad bike, and you have to know the route.
It’s a good five miles from the nearest public road, and he limits his movements to a radius of a couple of miles around the hut. When he first came here, he marked directions with branches so he wouldn’t get lost. This local territory provides him with a stream to fish in, fallen trees for his woodpile and convenient clearings where he can look out for birds and smaller game.
The hut is his sanctuary. Minimally modernized with a diesel-powered generator that he uses for charging his phone. Here he is no one. A man with no name, background or future. He simply is. Lives each day as it comes. Gets to sleep early. Wakes at dawn. Does what he has to without dwelling on whether it is good or bad.
There are dates carved into the log walls. And names. Messages to the future from other solitary men. Olof Persson 1881. Lars Persson 1890. Sven-Erik Eskola 1910. And so on. But what is solitude if not relative? Months can pass without him talking to anyone but himself, birds, trees and even rocks. Yet he feels less alone than ever. It is as if his childhood has caught up with him. Day by day he is getting closer to the boy who took refuge in the forest. The boy who learned how the world was constructed by sitting stock-still and watching the mating dance of black grouse in the spring. Following the progress of the vixen as she cared for her growing offspring, of the wood ants taking their shift in the heap or the bark beetle burrowing its way through the spruce.
The boy has a father. A strapping devil with arms that reach everywhere. The boy has a mother. Nobody takes her into account. The boy has a brother. Run, he says when their father gets home, and the boy makes off into the forest.
He catches a slowworm. When it sheds its tail, he catches it again. Pulls his knife from its sheath, severs the head from the body and everything falls silent. He is the silence.
The boy places the slowworm
on a rock. Leans against the trunk of a spruce and wipes the knife blade on his trousers. Scrapes it against a fingernail. Along its sharp edge there is freedom. Nobody can take that from him.
Another eagle is coming in. This one is a young male. He hasn’t yet got the white belly feathers of sexual maturity, or the yellow beak. Presumably born last year. Two years old max, he writes in his notebook. It is unusual, but it happens from time to time, he adds, that young eagles stay where they were born instead of moving south. Possible defect or sickness. Question mark. Keep an eye out. Exclamation mark.
The female is so engrossed that she doesn’t bother to look up when the young male, which has first circled the meat, dares to come in to land. There are mostly just bits of bone left now. She lets him get on with it. They tug and tear until the sinews come free and slip down their throats like spaghetti.
Within a few minutes, the day’s climax is over. He tucks his notebook and flask in his backpack. Pulls the strap of the rifle over his shoulder and crawls out of his hiding place. His right leg lags behind, as usual. He has to turn it manually in the direction of home. His route takes him along an animal path. Birch, alder and willow have already lost their leaves. He grabs a handful of lingonberries and pulls a bittersweet face. Bittersweet also describes the smell of the lumps of meat left in the lidded plastic drum. Well camouflaged under a spruce, but still. He should throw it all onto the feeding tray at the same time, but he just can’t. His time with the eagles means everything. It is for them that he breathes, eats, sleeps, shits. Tomorrow he will come here again. And then his phone rings. There is only one person who has this number. There is only one person he rings.
“Yes,” he says. “Right. Tomorrow morning. OK.”
It is a colder morning than usual. He adds a couple of extra logs and warms his hands around a coffee cup. If he wants to get out to the road on time he will have to set off soon. Things could happen on the way. The quad bike could break down. The ground could be waterlogged.
He walks the first few miles, to the place where he keeps the quad bike hidden. Purely as a precaution. If anyone were to find it, unlikely though that is, it would be impossible to link it to the hut or to him.
As he walks, he keeps a lookout for sea eagles. One of the nests is over this way but there are no birds to be seen. Pity. It would have given him a good feeling, something to live on. Not that he is dreading it, but still. A sea eagle is a sign. A good one.
Once he gets there he
brushes the spruce twigs off the machine, puts his backpack in the carrier in front and sets off for the meeting place.
The ground is dry enough, everything goes to plan. He gets there with ten minutes to spare and stays well hidden from the road before driving up to the barrier and turning the quad bike around for the return trip.
The car is already parked there. It’s always the same person who makes the delivery. The Cleaner knows him as the Delivery Man. The Delivery Man knows him as the Cleaner. They don’t know each other. Exchange only a few words.
“Who do you take orders from?” he asks.
The answer reassures him. The shorter the chain of command, the fewer the links.
This time he’s asked for some things he needs. A bottle of whisky and a few items of fresh food. And the newspapers, as usual. He jams them down into the carrier and goes back to the car.
The Delivery Man pulls his delivery out of the back seat.
A woman, which is unusual. Her hands are tied behind her back and there’s a hood over her head. Inarticulate sounds indicate her mouth is taped. At least he won’t have her idle chatter to contend with.
“Do whatever you want with her,” says the Delivery Man. “You have a free hand.”
Whatever he wants, as long as he does his job.
The individuals who come his way have earned their fate. To that extent, his conscience is clear. He is no sex killer or psychopath, even though the rest of the world would probably view him as a murderer following his baser instincts.
He and his employers have a deal. As long as they keep their side of the bargain, he will keep his.
“What did she do?” he asks for once. Maybe because it is a woman. Maybe because the Delivery Man is the first person he has spoken to for a long time.
“I don’t know,” says the Delivery Man, and the Cleaner believes him.
He climbs onto the quad bike and the Delivery Man helps him position the body in front of him. Body sounds better than woman.
“Strap the belt on, too,” he says. “That’s right, isn’t it, cutie pie? We don’t want you falling off.”
He raises his hand in farewell and drives back toward the hut.
While he is camouflaging the vehicle, the body is on its feet, tied to a tree. It’s not completely silent. It makes faint whimpering sounds, like a sick cat. Sick cats have to be put down. Still no sea eagles in sight.
“Off we go,” he says, and shoves the body ahead of him. He notes that it is not as fit as he is. On the last stretch he has to kick its hind legs to keep its feet
moving.
Normally he never takes bodies into the hut. This is an exception. He pushes it onto the bed and takes the chair for himself.
“Pleasure before work, will that be alright?” he asks the body. “And maybe put some more wood on the fire. Don’t you think it’s cold in here?”
The cat whimpers. He feels himself go hard. A woman is a woman, after all.
He peels off the body’s trousers and knickers. He is excited to see what she’s got under her wrappings. It’s a fairly young body. Thirty-five, maybe. Forty, max. Age makes no difference.
He starts out thinking he will take his time, just enjoy the view so to speak, but he’s too aroused to be patient. He tears off a length of plastic wrap, fuck knows what shit she might be carrying, winds the plastic a couple of times around his erection and adjusts the body so it is lying at a perfect angle for penetration.
“You can stay in the hut for a few days so we can cozy up,” he says, and fumbles like a virgin at church camp. He doesn’t even get it in before he comes.
Once his breathing calms and his desire goes flat, he sees that the body has wet itself.
Wet his bed, which decides everything.
“No more cozy,” he says, then does up his trousers and gets the body ready for departure.
The body can barely walk. It is on the verge of passing out, so he doesn’t take it as far as he had planned. Ties it to a tree for a second time and unties the cord of the cloth bag where he keeps his gun.
He contemplates the beautiful machine. Screws on the silencer and holds the pistol between both hands as a consecration of the action it’s about to perform.
Meow. Kitty won’t have to suffer anymore.
2
They’ve been sitting in the cold car for more than half an hour, waiting for a sign that the house is empty.
The car is parked a little way along a side road leading down to the river. It is out of sight of the house, behind a barn. But they have a good view of anyone driving in or out. First the woman drove off with the child in the back seat and now he is leaving, too.
This is not the first time they have sat here.
Every time they drive back into town with their assignment not carried out, Svala can breathe again, even though they drop her a good way outside Gasskas and she has to walk home. Home to Mammamärta. Home to a missing Mammamärta on Tjädervägen, where her grandmother has moved in instead.
There is nothing wrong with her, really. She does things that Mammamärtas never do. Cooks, cleans and fills the flat with her chatter. This is standard procedure. Mammamärta sometimes disappears and comes back a few days later without saying where she’s been, but this time is different. It’s been nearly a month since she put her handbag over her shoulder, kissed Svala on the head and said, I’ll be right back, my little swallow. Just going for some cigarettes.
Svala asked Grandma not to touch anything in her room. Not to clean up or collect dirty clothes into a pile while she’s at school. This room is the only place left untouched. As Svala lies down on the zebra-striped bedspread, Mammamärta is there again. As she sits at Svala’s desk, pretending to correct her homework. Stroking her hair and saying: “When I get paid, we’ll do something fun.”
Fun can mean going to Jokkmokk Winter Market and buying colorful socks and sweets.
Fun usually means a pizza at Buongiorno. They’ve brought in a pizza chef from Naples. Mammamärta bets he’s from Syria.
“Who cares?” Svala says. “I’m having a Vegetariana.”
The cheese is hot. It burns the roofs of their mouths. Svala gets another Coke. Mammamärta a second glass of wine. She’s at her best after one glass and a couple more gulps. She jokes about the people around them. Talks about things that happened long ago. Like the old Lapp who walks into a restaurant and orders grouse. Sticks his index finger up its arse and claims to be able to tell where it was shot. Maybe Arvidsjaur. She can’t exactly remember. But when Svala fills in the gaps, Mammamärta gets cross. Her eyes narrow even more than usual as she grips Svala’s hand and squeezes hard: “You’re Sami, you know. Not a bloody Lapp. Don’t you forget it. You ought to be proud of your roots.”
Which are what? A mother who’s missing, a dead dad. A grandma with angina. No siblings or close relatives. At least, none who want anything to do with her.
“Except Lisbeth,” says Grandma.
“And who’s Lisbeth?”
“Lisbeth Salander. Your dad’s half sister.”
“Nobody’s mentioned her before.”
“Your mum didn’t want anything to do with the Niedermanns,” says Grandma. “And that’s understandable.”
“Why?” Svala asks, but gets no proper answer.
“It was all a long time ago, not worth talking about,” says Grandma, indicating that the conversation is over. Instead she traces the lines of Svala’s palm with her finger.
“You’re going to have a long life,” she says. “At least three children. Somewhere there’s a break. After that, everything will be fine.”
At least three children. Bring new Svalas into the world? Not if she has anything to say about it. But the break…
It feels to Svala as if the break is already here. The autumn trees have burst into flames. She wants to paint their fire. An eye can perceive ten million shades of color. She wants to capture them in brushstrokes around a leaf.
She has no idea what their names are, those shady customers in the front seat. But she knows who is behind it all: Pap Peder. Her own worthless step. She would never honor him with the suffix “dad” or “father.”
Although he’s not been living with them for several years, he’s still lurking there like a starving pike in the reeds. Especially lately, since Mammamärta went missing.
The woman from social services said Svala ought to prepare herself for her mum having died.
“What of?” Svala asks.
“Your mum had her problems.”
“My mum hasn’t gone missing of her own free will.”
“We don’t always know everything about our parents.”
“Well, maybe you don’t.”
The car’s front door slams, the back door opens. She has company.
“Are you scared?” he says.
“No,” she says.
“Does this hurt?” he says, twisting her arm.
“No,” she says.
He shifts closer to her, puts an arm around her shoulders and pulls her to him.
“Shame we’re short on time, I get the feeling you’re good at one thing and another. A bit scrawny, that’s the only thing,” he says, and squeezes her shoulder. “But quite cute.”
With his other hand he grabs her by the chin and turns her face to his. She does her best not to meet his eye.
“You know what happens if you fail,” he says, and runs a finger across his throat. She holds her breath to avoid the smell of his. Like all the Peders and their disgusting crew, he stinks of unbrushed teeth, ammonia and smoke.
Her heart is ticking, her mouth is sticky, her lips are dry and smarting from the winter cold. Which is just as well. She might be powerless, but she has two advantages. The second-best thing is that she feels no pain. They
can hit or burn her as much as they like. Snap an arm or break a leg and get no reaction from her at all. Not even a stranglehold causes her any discomfort.
The best thing about her is something that cannot be explained, it is simply there. As if she knows the answer before the question is even asked.
You didn’t get your eyes to see with, Mammamärta says. You got them because you can see.
Not all of the days at Buongiorno have been double fizzy drinks. She has worked as hard for her pizza crusts as the tall Lapp girl at the funfair.
Roll up, roll up: Christina is already seven foot two and still growing.
Roll up, roll up: Beat Svala at Rubik’s Cube and win a thousand kronor.
Svala never loses, but the best show is about something else entirely.
The pizzeria does not look like normal pizzerias, with plasterwork around the door frames and humming drink fridges. The theme of Buongiorno is the world of the American mafia. The walls are hung with framed pictures of Al Capone, Johnny Torrio, Lucky Luciano, Joe Masseria and other gangsters, along with film stills, clothes and old guns with plugged barrels.
In one corner there is a safe, used not for money and diamonds but for plates and cutlery.
It is Pap Peder who comes up with the idea. The only present he has ever given Svala is precisely that: a safe. It’s not large, but heavy. And the main thing is it’s locked.
“I have no idea what’s in it,” he says, “but if you crack the code, you can keep the contents.”
She is ten years old and knows he is lying, but still she cannot resist having a go. There is something about her fingers and there is something about her brain. The figures flicker before her eyes like balls in a raffle drum. That is how she sees it. Or feels it. It takes a few attempts to get the information into order. Pap Peder shifts his feet impatiently beside her.
When she senses that the code has slotted into place, she turns to Pap Peder and says, “No, I can’t do it. I don’t know how.”
Anything at all could happen now. He could lose his temper and shout at her, which is the usual thing. He could slap her. That happens less often these days. Or he could slam the door behind him, creating enough pressure in the air to make the hall light hit the ceiling.
She sits still and listens. Once she feels sure he really has left the flat, she opens the door of the safe a little way.
There is money in the safe. More money than she has ever seen. But as she sits counting the five-hundred-krona notes, he is suddenly standing in front of her.
By this stage he knows that physical violence will get him nowhere with Svala. It doesn’t hurt her enough. But it hurts Mammamärta all the more.
“You realize I have to punish you,” he says. “Putting your hands over your ears won’t help.”
He has the great idea about the safe in the pizzeria a few years later.
The guests choose the code and Svala cracks it. Sometimes she gets a coin or two for herself. Or a tip that somehow escapes Pap Peder’s greedy eye. She keeps the money in the shaggy toy monkey on her bed. She unpicks the seam, pulls out a bit of the foam filling and sews it back up. ...
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