Free The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo Trilogy Bundle by Stieg Larsson Page B

peers. Borg, for one, was going to be an enemy for life. His taking on a role of social critic had actually transformed him into a prickly guest on TV sofas—he was always the one invited to comment whenever any CEO was caught with a golden parachute worth billions.
    Mikael had no trouble imagining that champagne bottles had been uncorked in some newspapers’ back rooms that evening.
    Erika had the same attitude to the journalist’s role as he did. Even when they were in journalism school they had amused themselves by imagining a magazine with just such a mission statement.
    Erika was the best boss Mikael could imagine. She was an organiser who could handle employees with warmth and trust but who at the same time wasn’t afraid of confrontation and could be very tough when necessary. Above all, she had an icy gut feeling when it came to making decisions about the contents of the upcoming issue. She and Mikael often had differing views and could have healthy arguments, but they also had unwavering confidence in each other, and together they made an unbeatable team. He did the field work of tracking down the story, while she packaged and marketed it.
    Millennium
was their mutual creation, but it would never have become reality without her talent for digging up financing. It was the working-class guy and the upper-class girl in a beautiful union. Erika came from old money. She had put up the initial seed money and then talked both her father and various acquaintances into investing considerable sums in the project.
    Mikael had often wondered why Erika had set her sights on
Millennium
. True, she was a part owner—the majority partner, in fact—and editor in chief of her own magazine, which gave her prestige and the control over publicity that she could hardly have obtained in any other job. Unlike Mikael, she had concentrated on television after journalism school. She was tough, looked fantastic on camera, and could hold her own with the competition. She also had good contacts in the bureaucracy. If she had stuck to it, she would undoubtedly have had a managerial job at one of the TV channels at a considerably higher salary than she paid herself now.
    Berger had also convinced Christer Malm to buy into the magazine. He was an exhibitionist gay celebrity who sometimes appeared with his boyfriend in “at home with” articles. The interest in him began when he moved in with Arnold Magnusson, an actor with a background at the Royal Dramatic Theatre who had made a serious breakthrough when he played himself in a docu-soap. Christer and Arn had then become a media item.
    At thirty-six, Malm was a sought-after professional photographer and designer who gave
Millennium
a modern look. He ran his business from an office on the same floor as
Millennium
, and he did graphic design one week in every month.
    The
Millennium
staff consisted of three full-time employees, a full-time trainee, and two part-timers. It was not a lucrative affair, but the magazine broke even, and the circulation and advertising revenue had increased gradually but steadily. Until today the magazine was known for its frank and reliable editorial style.
    Now the situation would in all probability be changing. Blomkvist read through the press release which he and Berger had drafted and which had quickly been converted to a wire service story from TT that was already up on
Aftonbladet
’s website.

    CONVICTED REPORTER LEAVES MILLENNIUM
    Stockholm (T.T.). Journalist Mikael Blomkvist is leaving his post as publisher of the magazine
Millennium
, reports editor in chief and majority shareholder Erika Berger.
    Blomkvist is leaving
Millennium
of his own choice. “He’s exhausted after the drama of recent months and needs time off,” says Berger, who will take over the role of publisher.
    Blomkvist was one of the founders of
Millennium
, started in 1990. Berger does not think that the magazine will suffer in the wake of the