The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest (Millennium 3)

Dakota wrote.

Salander was not sure, but she suspected that Dakota was a woman. The other citizens online, including the one who called himself SisterJen, were guys. Hacker Republic had a total (the last time she was connected) of sixty-two citizens, of whom four were female.

Wasp wrote.

Dakota wrote.

Trinity wrote.

He got abuse from five directions at once.

Of the sixty-two citizens, Wasp had met two face-to-face. Plague, who for some strange reason was not online, was one. Trinity was the other. He was English and lived in London. Two years earlier she had met him for a few hours when he helped her and Blomkvist in the hunt for Harriet Vanger by doing an illegal tapping of a landline in St. Albans. Salander fumbled with the clumsy stylus and wished she had a keyboard.

Mandrake wrote.

She punched letters.

Pred wrote.

Slip wrote.

Three chatters at once.

Salander summed up her situation in five lines, which were greeted by a worried muttering.

Trinity wrote.

Bambi wrote.

SisterJen wrote, and that was followed by a spate of disparaging remarks about Wasp's mental abilities. Salander smiled. The conversation resumed with a contribution from Dakota.

SixOfOne wrote.

Wasp wrote.

Mandrake wrote.

The citizens of Hacker Republic did not generally spread computer viruses. On the contrary--they were hackers and consequently implacable adversaries of those idiots who created viruses whose sole purpose was to sabotage the Net and crash computers. The citizens were information junkies and wanted a functioning Internet that they could hack.

But their proposal to shut down the Swedish government was not an idle threat. Hacker Republic comprised a very exclusive club of the best of the best, an elite force that any defence organization in the world would have paid enormous sums to use for cyber-military purposes, if the citizens could be persuaded to feel any kind of loyalty to any state. Which was not very likely.

But they were every one of them computer wizards, and they were well versed in the art of contriving viruses. Nor did they need much convincing to carry out particular campaigns if the situation warranted. Some years earlier a citizen of Hacker Republic, who in his private life was a software developer in California, had been cheated out of a patent by a hot dot-com company that had the nerve to take the citizen to court. This caused the activists in Hacker Republic to devote a startling amount of energy for six months to hacking and destroying every computer owned by that company. All the company's secrets and emails--along with some fake documents that might lead people to think that its CEO was involved in tax fraud--were gleefully posted on the Net, along with information about the CEO's now not-so-secret mistress and pictures from a party in Hollywood in which he could be seen snorting cocaine. The company went under in six months, and several years later some members of the "people's militia" in Hacker Republic, who did not easily forget an enemy, were still haunting the former CEO.

If fifty of the world's foremost hackers decided to launch a coordinated attack against an entire country, the country might survive, but not without serious problems. The costs would certainly run into the billions if Salander gave it the thumbs-up. She thought for a moment.

Dakota wrote.

Mandrake wrote.

Bambi wrote.

Trinity wrote.

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 benefits 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 programme Asphyxia 1.3, which was available in the Republic's archive for its citizens. Asphyxia was a programme 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:

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 titled [Read this first].

Hi, Sally. The situation is as follows:

The police haven't found your apartment and don't have access to the DVD 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 backpack 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 aggravated assault against and the attempted murder of Zalachenko, and aggravated assault against Carl-Magnus Lundin at Stallarholmen--i.e., because you shot him in the foot and broke his jaw when you kicked him. But a source in the police whom I trust tells me that the evidence in each case is vague. The following is important:

(1) Before Zalachenko was shot he denied everything and claimed that it could only have been Niedermann who shot and buried you. He laid a charge against you for attempting to murder him. The prosecutor is going to go on about this being the second time you have tried to kill him.