“Henrik is going to make good on everything he promised. He’s arranging an
interview and is going public with a direct assault on Wennerström. You can have
all the details later, but roughly the situation is this: when Wennerström was
employed in the finance department of the Vanger Corporation, he spent several
million kronor speculating on foreign currency. This was long before foreign
exchange futures became the rage. He did this without authority. One deal after
another went bad, and he was sitting there with a loss of seven million kronor that
he tried to cover up. Partly by cooking the books and partly by speculating even
harder. It inevitably came to light and he was sacked.”
“Did he make any profit himself?”
“Oh yes, he made off with about half a million kronor, which ironically enough
became the seed money for the Wennerström Group. We have documentation for
all of this. You can use the information however you like, and Henrik will back up
the accusations publicly. But...”
“But, and it’s a big but, Dirch, the information is worthless,” Blomkvist said,
slamming his fist on the table. “It all happened thirty-plus years ago and it’s a
closed book.”
“You’ll get confirmation that Wennerström is a crook.”
“That will annoy Wennerström when it comes out, but it won’t damage him any
more than a direct hit from a peashooter. He’s going to shuffle the deck by putting
out a press release saying that Henrik Vanger is an old has-been who’s still trying to
steal some business from him, and then he’ll probably claim that he was acting on
orders from Henrik. Even if he can’t prove his innocence, he can lay down enough
smoke screens that no-one will take the story seriously.”
Frode looked unhappy.
“You conned me,” Blomkvist said.
“That wasn’t our intention.”
“I blame myself. I was grasping at straws, and I should have realised it was
something like that.” He laughed abruptly. “Henrik is an old shark. He was selling a
product and told me what I wanted to hear. It’s time you went, Dirch.”
“Mikael...I’m sorry that...”