Hired for secrets

Prepare for the worst

Sofie had been looking forward to her date with Phillip. But in the cold hard light of the day her 'date' looked more like a trap. She wanted to trust Philip. But was she naive for doing so? In unclear situations like these, Sofie resorted to collecting more intel. But there wasn't more to be found out about Philip. So instead she put her trust in technology, equipping herself with gadgets that could get her through any hairy situation she might encounter tonight.

The doorbell of the little hardware store played the theme song of X-file as Sofie entered. She found this place on the internet. It was on the outskirts of London and suitably small to not be asking uncomfortable questions or requiring identification. The only online review read 'dodgy and strange'. It was a great endorsement for a spy-store, especially one that could serve Sofie's unusual and borderline legal requirements.

An unpleasant mixture of mildew and soldering fumes hit her as she stepped over a mountain of old mail into the one-room shop. The place was stuffed to the ceiling with boxes containing radio-transmitters, surveillance cameras and computer chips. Looking around the windowless room, she noticed a half dead indoor plant in one corner and a life size mannequin with a baseball cap and bulletproof vest in the other.

An oversized glass vitrine took up most of the dingy room. It displayed the shop's more pricey items. Sofie recognised the CSR-PRO-3000, a counter surveillance receiver developed for the Israeli military to locate any types of bugs, video transmitters, and tape recorders. With this bad boy, Elandra would have had no problem spotting her remaining camera. Luckily, this device was not part of the standard equipment for security personnel, at least not in this country. Sofie didn't recognize any of the other devices in the display case. They presumably had similarly left-field application areas. Half of them even looked custom made, with wires and oddly shaped antennas sticking out of the open casings. 'Strange' wasn't even covering how this place looked.

"I'll be out in just a second..." a male voice called from the back room.

With a sudden loud bang, several cardboard boxes came tumbling through the curtain that separated the back from the shop's display area. The shopkeeper let out a pained groan.

"Are you ok?" Sofie tried to peek through the gap in the fabric but it was too dark to see.

"Fine, fine," the voice shouted. "Maybe like this... Um, no... Ah, darn. I'm stuck... They delivered the shipment to the wrong entrance, and now... Sorry, not your problem... Do you mind coming to the back? I cannot get out."

Sofie smiled, 'dodgy' was also a very accurate description. She carefully stepped over a wild tangle of power extensions and cables that crisscrossed the room to various monitors and machines. This place was a mess and a fire hazard on top of it. But given that nothing seemed to have exploded so far and the monitors weren't even flickering, the person running this place knew what they were doing. This certainly was the right place to upgrade her gear for tonight's assignment.

She pushed the blotchy green curtain to the side to find an elderly man surrounded by hundreds of little boxes containing GPS trackers. Clearing up this mess without crushing any of the fragile content would take a while. No wonder he summoned her to the back instead of trying to forge a path out of it.

"How can I help you, tod- ...," his milky-blue eyes landed on Sofie and he let out a loud sigh. "I don't have time for this today, dear. Tell Mike his jokes aren't funny anymore."

"I don't know any Mike," Sofie huffed. The old man's eyesight seemed to not be the best and he must have confused her with somebody else. "I need some Dal Model 2 motion sensors..."

"Yes yes, ...baked into a cheesecake, I suppose? Or installed inside a ship in a bottle? Look, you're obviously an actress, and I'm obviously busy. So let's skip to the part where you tell Mike that I'm now working on the ridiculously time consuming thing you supposedly commissioned. Yes?"