His mind was a tangle and he looked in disbelief at the band
of officers on his front step. Dazed, he looked at Day and then spoke
out loud, as if talking to himself, `But you're too short to be a
cop.'
Day looked surprised. `Is that meant to be an insult?' he said.
It wasn't. Mendax was in denial and it wasn't until the police had
slipped past him into the house that the reality of the situation
slowly began to sink in. Mendax's mind started to work again.
The disks. The damn disks. The beehive.
An avid apiarist, Mendax kept his own hive. Bees fascinated him. He
liked to watch them interact, to see their sophisticated social
structure. So it was with particular pleasure that he enlisted their
help in hiding his hacking activities. For months he had meticulously
secreted the disks in the hive. It was the ideal location--unlikely,
and well guarded by 60000 flying things with stings. Though he hadn't
bought the hive specifically for hiding stolen computer account
passwords for the likes of the US Air Force 7th Command Group in the
Pentagon, it appeared to be a secure hiding place.
He had replaced the cover of the super box, which housed the
honeycomb, with a sheet of coloured glass so he could watch the bees
at work.
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