Spies #3

This is the story of how I became a spy.

It all started when I was enlisted to partake in a Quest, a scavenger hunt of sorts heavy with secret agent elements, put together by friends. My roommate, we’ll call him Bombador Ali, and I immediately began preparing clues for Sydney and Bristow, our challengers:

We hollowed out a book and placed a camera inside, researched matrices to encode messages, and printed maps on transparencies, maps which only revealed a path when overlaid with alternate diagrams. I climbed a fire escape ladder and hid a message at the top. Bombador removed ceiling panels and climbed into a dusty attic, finding his way by the light of his cell phone while college professors chatted one floor below. (A creak on the stairs!—we pause, Bombador’s foot dangling from a removed panel in the ceiling… the creak is a false alarm. We resume.)

We thought we were awesome. (And to be honest, we are rather awesome. Hollowed out books? How much cooler can a man get?) We worried that the quest they were creating for us would not measure up to ours.

Then the Quest was launched. Bombador was at a birthday party when I received the email initiating the quest, so I opened it without him. It read: “A friend (or foe?) sent you a self-destructing message. You have one chance to read it.” I clicked on the link provided, which sent me to a new website. Numbers in the upper right corner immediately started counting down from sixty seconds, and I read the message quickly. In short, the text stated that Bombador and I were to meet in the basement of a building on campus at 9:00 PM, wearing “the appropriate attire.” When the ticker hit zero, the message erased.

That was my first hint that their quest was of a high caliber indeed. Self destructing messages! This was a spy’s bread and butter, and I was swallowing it without even chewing.

Bombador returned. Being too poor to own a suit, I borrowed one from another roommate. Bombador wore a black wool cap and leather jacket. I looked like James Bond, and Bombador resembled a feisty henchman. At 9:00 sharp, we arrived at the specified location. I was more giddy than severe, and it showed. I became a chatterbox, spouting off words so fast that later, when Bombador repeated to me some of the things I’d said, I didn’t even remember them.

A dour stranger in a long tan trench coat approached us. I’m embarrassed to admit that I was smiling broadly, unable to hide my eagerness. The man handed me a briefcase, nodded once, and departed, all without a word.

Back at base, we watched the DVD provided inside the briefcase. Words scrolled across a black screen: “We’ve been watching you.”

Suddenly, I appear onscreen. A shaky camera follows me as I walk through the school cafeteria, tray of food in hand. I look in the direction of the camera, and the image freezes, zeroing in on my face. Next, the video transitions to show Bombador, standing in a stairway. A third scene reveals Bombador and I, standing and reading a newspaper.

As we watched this, Bombador and I giggled like children on a Tilt-A-Whirl. While I’m sure it might freak out a person who is less obsessed with spies, the fact that Sidney and Bristow had taped us without our knowledge was invigorating. I was impressed with the skill required to pull off such a feat, but more than that, I was impressed by their audacity.

Sidney and Bristow were not amateurs. Whereas before, Bombador and I had worried that their quest would pale in comparison to ours, we now worried that the quest we’d created wasn’t good enough.

So we made a plan. We would break into their apartment.