“It was all a fake from beginning to end. The documents were skilful forgeries.
Wennerström’s lawyer was able to prove that the photograph of Wennerström’s
subordinate and the Ustashe leader was a montage of two different images.”
“Fascinating,” Salander said.
“In hindsight it was very easy to see how we had been manipulated. Our original
story really had damaged Wennerström. Now that story was drowned in a clever
forgery. We published a story that Wennerström could pick apart point by point
and prove his innocence.”
“You couldn’t back down and tell the truth? You had absolutely no proof that
Wennerström had committed the falsification?”
“If we had tried to tell the truth and accused Wennerström of being behind the
whole thing, nobody would have believed us. It would have looked like a desperate
attempt to shift the blame from our stupidity on to an innocent leader of industry.”
“I see.”
“Wennerström had two layers of protection. If the fake had been revealed, he
would have been able to claim that it was one of his enemies trying to slander him.
And we at Millennium would once again have lost all credibility, since we fell for
something that turned out to be false.”
“So you chose not to defend yourself and take the prison sentence.”
“I deserved it,” Blomkvist said. “I had committed libel. Now you know. Can I go back
to sleep now?”
He turned off the lamp and shut his eyes. Salander lay down next to him.
“Wennerström is a gangster.”
“I know.”
“No, I mean, I know that he’s a gangster. He works with everybody from the Russian
mafia to the Colombian drug cartels.”
“What do you mean?”