The Girl Who Played with Fire Read Online Free PDF

fell into the pool after bothering Miss Salander for an entire evening. To MacAllen’s credit, he did not hold a grudge. He came back the following night, all sobered up, and offered to buy Salander a beer, which, after a brief hesitation, she accepted. From then on they greeted each other politely when they saw each other in the bar.
    “Everything OK?”
    Salander nodded and took the glass. “Any news about Matilda?”
    “Still headed our way. It could be a real bad weekend.”
    “When will we know?”
    “Actually not before she’s passed by. She could head straight for Grenada and then decide to swing north at the last moment.”
    Then they heard a laugh that was a little too loud and turned to see the lady from room 32, apparently amused by something her husband had said.
    “Who are they?”
    “Dr. Forbes? They’re Americans from Austin, Texas.” Ella Carmichael said the word
Americans
with a certain distaste.
    “I could tell they’re Americans, but what are they doing here? Is he a GP?”
    “No, not that kind of doctor. He’s here for the Santa Maria Foundation.”
    “What’s that?”
    “They support education for talented children. He’s a fine man. He’s discussing a proposal for a new high school in St. George’s with the Ministry of Education.”
    “He’s a fine man who beats his wife,” Salander said.
    Ella gave Salander a sharp look and went to the other end of the bar to serve some local customers.
    Salander stayed for ten minutes with her nose in
Dimensions
. She had known that she had a photographic memory since before she reached puberty, and because of it she was very different from her classmates. Shehad never revealed this to anyone—except to Blomkvist in a moment of weakness. She already knew the text of
Dimensions in Mathematics
by heart and was dragging the book around mainly because it represented a physical link to Fermat, as if the book had become some kind of talisman.
    But this evening she could not concentrate on Fermat or his theorem. Instead she saw in her mind Dr. Forbes sitting motionless, gazing at the same distant point in the sea at the Carenage.
    She could not have explained why she knew that something was not right.
    Finally she closed the book, went back to her room, and booted up her PowerBook. Surfing the Internet did not call for any thinking. The hotel did not have broadband, but she had a built-in modem that she could hook up to her Panasonic mobile phone and with that setup she could send and receive email. She typed a message to [email protected]:
    No broadband here. Need info on a Dr. Forbes with the Santa Maria Foundation, and his wife, living in Austin, Texas. $500 to whoever does the research. Wasp.

    She attached her public PGP key, encrypted the message with Plague’s PGP key, and sent it. Then she looked at the clock and saw that it was just past 7:30 p.m.
    She turned off her computer, locked her door, and walked four hundred yards along the beach, past the road to St. George’s, and knocked on the door of a shack behind the Coconut.
    George Bland was sixteen and a student. He intended to become a lawyer or a doctor or possibly an astronaut, and he was just as skinny as Salander and only a little taller. Salander had met him on the beach the day after she moved to Grand Anse. She had sat down in the shade under some palms to watch the children playing football by the water. She was engrossed in
Dimensions
when the boy came and sat in the sand a few yards away from her, apparently without noticing she was there. She observed him in silence. A thin black boy in sandals, black jeans, and a white shirt.
    He too had opened a book and immersed himself in it. Like her, he was reading a mathematics book—
Basics 4
. He began to scribble in an exercise book. Five minutes later, when Salander cleared her throat, he jumped up with a start. He apologized for bothering her and was on thebrink of being gone when she asked him if what he was working on