Meidan bit the head off another squirrel.

"Do we have to keep him around?" asked Wongca, obviously disgusted.

"He has really turned out to be quite useful.  But don't worry, he's
going to be retired soon enough, my dear." Lew fed a cricket to his
lizard and cracked an evil grin.

Meidan was a bad, bad man.  But next to Lew he looked like Mother
Teresa.  Lew was dealing and smuggling drugs, weapons, criminals,
secrets and Kenny G discs.  Then later in the day he would steal candy
from babies, pension checks from senior citizens and BMWs from
lawyers.  Or rather he had people who would do that for him.  He
rewarded them with protection at first, money next, and finally a
quick and painless death.  Meidan was already in the money stage.
Money and squirrels - Lew was giving him squirrels, and Wongca didn't
like that at all.

"Meidan," started Lew.  Meidan immediately drew a gun and pointed it
directly at Lew, as was his reflex - this was the fourth time today.
And it was also the fourth time that Wongca's foot knocked the gun
from his hand and almost broke his wrist.

"You'd think he might learn," she muttered as she leaned back on the
desk.  She appeared to relax, but was actually ready to defend Lew at
any moment.  She was an expert marksman and a master of Shaolin
Karate, incredibly fast and even more dangerous.  Lew liked to think
of her as his Jedi bodyguard, even though she never really moved stuff
with her mind - it just looked that way sometimes.

"Why don't you take that out to the garden?" Lew went on, motioning to
the headless rodent carcass.

Meidan picked up his gun and put it back in his shoulder holster,
careful not to point it at anyone.  Then taking the rest of his
squirrel, he went out through the glass doors and disappeared down the
steps to the garden.

"He really makes me sick!" complained Wongca.

"Relax, it's only until he recovers the information.  We both know
that he's the only one qualified for this job, except for me, of
course." Lew grinned. "You certainly wouldn't prefer to have me out
there doing it myself."

"No, of course not.  If it wasn't for that crazy bird lady, though, we
wouldn't be in this situation at all."

"Come now.  You know she's the best at what she does, too.  Well,
except for me, of course.  And besides, it's not her fault that the
courier failed to deliver.  I'm having Meidan take care of the
courier, too, just as soon as Apteryx tells me who he is."

"What if she doesn't tell you?" Wongca didn't have any faith in the
moral character of archcriminals.

"Well, that would be most unfortunate for her.  She's very bright,
though, you know.  She couldn't find out anything about me, and she
tried her best.  So I assume she realizes that it wasn't much of a
challenge for me to find out about her." Lew turned to his computer
and pulled up his file on Apteryx.  The world's second best hacker,
Apteryx was known from Melbourne to Belfast.  Her real name was
Huangt, and although he wouldn't admit it, Lew had had some difficulty
finding that out.

Huangt had an apartment in Zurich, seven accounts in a Zurich bank
account, and Swiss, American, French, Canadian, Japanese, British and
Dutch passports.  Customs reports showed that she had arrived in
Switzerland 10 days before.  She had an illegal cellular phone, and
the records showed many calls from Zurich to London and Hong Kong.
Her American Express records showed purchases of over 3000 Swiss
Francs at designer stores in Zurich in the last week. "Truly amazing,"
said Lew. "Swiss customs, phone records, credit cards, banking and an
apartment all placing her in Zurich."

"Don't you have that guy with the piano wire in Switzerland?"

"Yes, but the best part," he said enthusiastically, "is that she's in
Tokyo." Lew was extremely pleased with himself for having discovered
Apteryx's identity and location.  He was even more pleased that she
had tried and failed to discover his.  He loved to have the upper hand
(and always did), because, although he was a man of his word, he too
put little trust in the people he normally dealt with.

"That's easy then, you've got that whole family there." 

"Of course, but I don't want to kill her.  I've never had an associate
who was so useful while still not being a threat.  Besides, I need
those codes before the satellite is launched next week if I want to
take control."

"Then why did you let her do it for you in the first place?  She's a
little bit crazy, you know." Wonga picked up some darts from the desk
and started throwing bulls-eyes.

"I know.  But I would have had to go to the Cosmodrome to get the
codes.  I hate to do field work, much too risky.  Plus I hate the
weather in Russia this time of year." 

A Chinese crime lord who figured himself to be some kind of hotshot
had put together a "telecommunications" satellite that was to be
launched the following week.  It was actually a spy satellite with
resolution down to two feet and a variable orbit.  He had let it out
to the underworld that he was going to sell images for a fee, no
questions asked.  Lew had other plans.  He had never owned a spy
satellite and only liked extortion when he was on the receiving end.
So he decided to steal the satellite, no questions asked.

An encryption key for giving instructions to and receiving data from
the satellite was stored on the onboard computer.  It was
reprogrammable after launch, so all Lew had to do was get the keys
before the launch, and steal the satellite before the former owner had
a chance to change codes.  Stealing the key meant going to the launch
site.  So instead he cracked a few tough military and corporate
information systems around the world and offered Huangt a trade.  The
codes were apparently on their way when the courier reported that they
had been lost in Green Hill.  Lew had called Meidan out here to get
them back and to tie up the loose ends.

xbiff beeped and Lew found a message from Apteryx.  He first did an
RSA decoding to find what appeared to be random characters.  He then
tried cycling bits, ANDing and ORing with bit masks and so forth.
Everything in his toolbox that Apteryx had not used before.  After 2
or 3 minutes he discovered a decoding that gave him a nice ASCII file,
except that it looked like nonsense.  The first few lines, though,
looked like this:

apteryX

,etxs efxR

It was obviously a simple substitution cipher written backwards.
Another minute and he had a sed program that gave him what he wanted.

"Aha, here's our courier," he beamed.

"So who is he?" Wongca was now throwing the darts at the double 20.

"It's not a he," lew chuckled. "And her name is Conroy."