Guardian of Lies by Steve Martini

to read his mail.
    To mask the messages he used encryption, not the stuff for e-mail that came loaded on your home computer, but custom made. In Liquida’s world, paranoia was an acquired discipline. This meant that the keys to almost all commercial encryption software were already in the possession of the American government.
    He hired a gentleman in Guadalajara who fashioned the encoding software from complex algorithms. After that the man destroyed the master key to prevent anyone else from getting at it. Liquida knew this because he’d watched him do it, thirty seconds before he killed the man, cutting his throat and torching every inch of his office with gasoline.
    After Pike’s murder and the disappearance of the woman, there was relative silence for a time. This changed abruptly with the news of the woman’s arrest. According to Liquida’s contact, the go-between who had acted on behalf of higher-ups to commission the job, the inefficiency with which it was done was now threatening ominous results.
    While Liquida was not told why this was a problem, he was told that people would soon be asking questions about Pike and his background. He knew very little about the old man.
    Pike’s documents were still unaccounted for. The one he produced was on its way to them by DHL along with the old man’s computer.
    But the most ominous problem, the one that caused him to stay up nights wondering if they might soon be issuing another commission, this time on his own life, was their unbridled anger over the woman’s arrest. Either she was important or she wasn’t. If she was critical to their plan, they should have told him this, in which case he would have arranged it so that she could not escape.
    The answer came in an encrypted e-mail message five minutes later. He took the message from one of the computers inside the café and downloaded the encoded machine language onto a tiny thumb drive plugged into the computer’s USB port. Then he erased the message from the in-box, removing it from the most obvious location inside the computer. He knew there would be copies of it in other places, both inside the computer and with the various providers along the ether chain. But this could not be helped and all of the copies were scrambled. And even if someone could read it, unless they knew what they were looking for, they might not understand it.
    He removed the thumb drive and retreated to the table outside and his coffee.
    From his backpack he removed a small antiquated notebook computer. It was the size of a thin hardcover novel. Somewhat beaten up and worn, it had never once been connected to the Internet or any other computer network. It contained no data of any kind, only the basic operating system and a single user program.
    Liquida booted up the computer and punched up the program. He slipped the thumb drive into the single USB port on the back of the machine and pulled up the message. After several clicks on the keyboard the words appeared, not encrypted, but in plain Spanish. As usual, it was brief and, except to the most discerning reader, it would have been completely obscure.
     
The following is a riddle. See if you can find the solution:

You have released the serpent of coiled and twisting justice. The head is female but with scaled eyes. She does not see, and therefore cannot strike. But beware the thrashing tail. It may turn over rocks not comprehending what is there and snag vines not knowing to what they are attached. It may crawl into places it should not go. Solution: how do you dispatch a serpent?
     
    It was not what Liquida expected. They were not worried because the woman had information she might reveal. She knew nothing. Her eyes were scaled.
    He studied the message, and from the lines of the riddle he quickly deduced the problem.
    He had driven the woman to the one place he should not have, into the glare of a trial in an American courtroom. It was not what she might say, but what they might discover