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I knew Alex was too cool to look over his shoulder or show any sign that he was nervous. If there was anything that looked wrong, he’d walk right out—not in an obvious hurry, but not dawdling, either.

With every minute that ticked by, I got more anxious. How long could it take to pick up a small package? Okay, I thought, calm down, there are probably a lot of people in line at the registration desk, and he has to wait his turn.

More minutes ticked by. I was beginning to think I’d have to walk in myself and see if there was a crowd of cops, or maybe ask a casino guest if there had been some kind of police action a few minutes before.

But there he was, coming out the door, sauntering casually over to me with a huge grin on his face.

Filled with anticipation, heart pumping, we stood right there on the street and opened the package. Inside, a clear white case contained, as promised, five cell phone 27C512 EPROMs. I had been social-engineering for years, but this was probably my biggest prize ever up to that time. If, that is, the chips really worked. We crossed Las Vegas Boulevard to the Peppermill, avoiding the tourist-filled cocktail lounge with its sexy waitresses in favor of a booth in the restaurant area, where we would be less conspicuous.

Lewis De Payne joined us. Yes, the guy who was now my ex-wife’s lover.

I’m not sure I can explain why I kept in contact with Lewis after he stole my wife. Obviously I never trusted or respected him again. But frankly, there were so few people I dared to stay in touch with at all that I needed someone who understood my predicament. And who could understand it better than Lewis? He had been my hacking buddy from the start. We’d been through a lot together.

It would’ve been easy to think of him with bitterness, as my arch-enemy. He certainly qualified. But at the same time, he was also genuinely one of my best friends. And Bonnie was another. Eventually, I had moved past the pain and begun seeing them again. We gradually became friends, like those divorced couples with kids who end up having picnics together with their new spouses on family holidays.

We’re often advised to “forgive and forget.” In this case, “forgiveness” may be too strong a word. I had to let go of the resentment for my own sake, but I couldn’t afford to forget. Although Lewis was a good hacking partner and I valued his skill set, I hacked with him only when I had a failsafe—when we both stood to lose if he tried to turn me in.

Under these new conditions, Lewis and I had resumed our hacking together and created a new version of our old friendship that had changed forever.

Now, in our booth in the Peppermill, I thought Lewis’s eyes were going to pop out of his head when he saw those chips. He sat down without fanfare and started disassembling my phone, carefully arranging its parts on the table and jotting the details on a notepad so he’d know where each belonged when he was ready to put them all back together.

In less than five minutes, Lewis had the phone taken apart, down to the circuit board, revealing the chip held in place by a ZIF (“zero insertion force”) socket. I handed him one of the new chips. He slipped it into place and began his careful reassembly. I didn’t want to say anything that would throw him off, but I was growing antsy, wishing he’d work just a little faster so I could find out if we had hit a goldmine or not.

As soon as it was completely together, I snatched the phone from him and punched in the function code that Kumamoto-san had given me. For this test, I programmed the ESN and changed the phone number to match the ones for Lewis’s phone.

The phone turned itself off and rebooted. I could feel my every heartbeat at the front of my scalp. All three of our heads were bent over the table, focused on the phone’s little screen.

The display lit with the start-up screen. I punched in the function to display the phone’s ESN. The numbers that appeared were the ones for the ESN I had entered.