“Because as I was thinking about hiring someone, your name cropped up in the news. I knew who you were, of course. And maybe it’s because you sat on my knee when you were a little fellow. Don’t misunderstand me.” He waved the thought away. “I don’t look to you to help me for sentimental reasons. It was just that I had the impulse to contact you specifically
Mikael gave a friendly laugh. “Well, I don’t remember being perched on your knee. But how could you make the connection? That was in the early sixties.”
“You misunderstood me. Your family moved to Stockholm when your father got the job as the workshop foreman at Zarinder’s Mechanical. I was the one who got him the job. I knew he was a good worker. I used to see him over the years when I had business with Zarinder’s. We weren’t close friends, but we would chat for a while. The last time I saw him was the year before he died, and he told me then that you had got into journalism school. He was extremely proud. of the bank robber gang. I’ve followed your career and read many of your articles over the years. As a matter of fact, I read Millennium quite often.”
“OK, I’m with you, but what is it exactly that you want me to do?”
Vanger looked down at his hands, then sipped his coffee, as if he needed a pause before he could at last begin to broach what he wanted .
“Before I get started, Mikael, I’d like to make an agreement with you. I want you to do two things for me. One is a pretext and the other is my real objective.”
“What form of agreement?”
“I’m going to tell you a story in two parts. The first is about the Vanger family. That’s the pretext. It’s a long, dark story, and I’ll try to stick to the unvarnished truth. The second part of the story deals with my actual objective. You’ll probably think some of the story is…crazy. What I want is for you to hear me out—about what I want you to do and also what I am offering—before you make up your mind whether to take on the job or not.”
Blomkvist sighed. Obviously Vanger was not going to let him go in time to catch the afternoon train. He was sure that if he called Frode to ask for a lift to the station, the car would somehow refuse to start in the cold .
The old man must have thought long and hard how he was going to hook him. Blomkvist had the feeling that every last thing that had happened since he arrived was staged: the introductory surprise that as a child he had met his host, the picture of his parents in the album, and the emphasis on the fact that his father and Vanger had been friends, along with the flattery that the old man knew who Mikael Blomkvist was and that he had been following his career for years from a distance…. No doubt it had a core of truth, but it was also pretty elementary psychology. Vanger was a practised manipulator—how else had he become one of Sweden’s leading industrialists?
Blomkvist decided that Vanger wanted him to do something that he was not going to have the slightest desire to do. He had only to wrest from him what this was and then say no thank you. And just possibly be in time to catch the afternoon train.
