“I doubt it. But you said there were two things. The book is the pretext. What is the
real objective?”
Vanger stood up, laboriously again, and took the photograph of Harriet Vanger
from the desk. He set it down in front of Blomkvist.
“While you write the biography I want you to scrutinise the family with the eyes of a
journalist. It will also give you an alibi for poking around in the family history. What
I want is for you to solve a mystery. That’s your real assignment.”
“What mystery?”
“Harriet was the granddaughter of my brother Richard. There were five brothers.
Richard was the eldest, born in 1907. I was the youngest, born in 1920. I don’t
understand how God could create this flock of children who...” For several seconds
Vanger lost the thread, immersed in his thoughts. Then he went on with new
decisiveness. “Let me tell you about my brother Richard. Think of this as a small
sample from the family chronicle I want you to write.”
He poured more coffee for himself.
“In 1924, now seventeen, Richard was a fanatical nationalist and anti Semite. He
joined the Swedish National Socialist Freedom League, one of the first Nazi groups
in Sweden. Isn’t it fascinating that Nazis always manage to adopt the
word freedom?”
Vanger pulled out another album and leafed through it until he found the page he
was looking for. “Here’s Richard with the veterinarian Birger Furugård, soon to
become the leader of the so-called Furugård movement, the big Nazi movement of
the early thirties. But Richard did not stay with him. He joined, a few years later, the
Swedish Fascist Battle Organisation, the SFBO, and there he got to know Per
Engdahl and others who would be the disgrace of the nation.”
He turned the page in the album: Richard Vanger in uniform.
“He enlisted—against our father’s wishes—and during the thirties he made his way
through most of the Nazi groups in the country. Any sick conspiratorial association
that existed, you can be sure his name was on their roster. In 1933 the Lindholm
movement was formed, that is, the National Socialist Workers’ Party. How well do
you know the history of Swedish Nazism?”