- I have a proposal, the idea is to revise the tax system. I have a program that would be perfect for a small country like Norway, - Bambi wrote.
- Well, but Stockholm is in Sweden, - Trinity wrote.
- What's the difference? It can be done as follows...
Salander leaned back against the pillow and followed the conversation with a smile. She wondered why she, who had such difficulty talking about herself with people of flesh and blood, could blithely reveal her most intimate secrets to a bunch of completely unknown freaks on the Internet. The fact was that if Salander could claim to have any sort of family or group affiliation, then it was with these lunatics. None of them actually had a hope of helping her with the problems she had with the Swedish state. But she knew that, if the need arose, they would devote both time and cunning to performing effective demonstrations of their powers. Through this network she could also find herself hideouts abroad. It had been Plague's contacts on the Net who had provided her with a Norwegian passport in the name of Irene Nesser.
Salander had no idea who the citizens of Hacker Republic were, and she had only a vague notion of what they did when they were not on the Net - the citizens were uniformly vague about their identities. SixOfOne had once claimed that he was a black, male American of Catholic origin living in Toronto. He could just as easily be white, female and Lutheran, and living in Skovde.
The one she knew best was Plague - he had introduced her to the family, and nobody became a member of this exclusive club without very strong recommendations. And for anyone to become a member they had also to be known personally to one other citizen.
On the Net, Plague was an intelligent and socially gifted citizen. In real life he was a severely overweight and socially challenged thirty-year-old living on disability benefit in Sundbyberg. He bathed too seldom and his apartment smelled like a monkey house. Salander visited him only once in a blue moon. She was content to confine her dealings with him to the Net.
As the chat continued, Wasp downloaded mail that had been sent to her private mailbox at Hacker Republic. One was from another member, Poison, and contained an improved version of her program Asphyxia 1.3, which was available in the Republic's archive for its citizens. Asphyxia was a program that could control other people's computers via the Internet. Poison said that he had used it successfully, and that his updated version included the latest versions of Unix, Apple and Windows. She emailed him a brief reply and thanked him for the upgrade.
During the next hour, as evening approached in the United States, another half-dozen citizens had come online and welcomed back Wasp before joining the debate. When Salander logged off, the others were discussing to what extent the Swedish Prime Minister's computer could be made to send civil but crazy emails to other heads of state. A working group had been formed to explore the matter. Salander logged off by writing a brief message:
- Keep talking but do nothing without my approval. Come back when I can.
Everyone sent her hugs and kisses and admonished her to keep the hole in her head warm.
Only when Salander had logged out of Hacker Republic did she go into Yahoo and log on to the private newsgroup [Idiotic_Table]. She discovered that the group had two members - herself and Blomkvist. The mailbox had one message, sent on May 15. It was entitled [Read this first].
Hi Sally. The situation is as follows: The police haven't found your apartment and don't have access to the D.V.D. of Bjurman's rape. The disk is very strong evidence. I don't want to turn it over to Annika without your approval. I have the keys to your apartment and a passport in name of Nesser.
But the police do have the rucksack you had in Gosseberga. I don't know if it contains anything compromising.
Salander thought for a moment. Don't think so. A half-empty thermos of coffee, some apples, a change of clothes. No problem.
You're going to be charged with G.B.H. against or the attempted murder of Zalachenko, and G.B.H against Carl-Magnus Lundin at Stallarholmen - i.e., because you shot him in the foot and broke his jaw when you