The Swedish Sex Bomb (LSD, #7)

1. The World Is My Oyster

Stockholm - Wednesday, 21st of February 2018

The World Is My Oyster

The phone rings.

It's a dilemma.

It's not my phone.

I'm not in my own house.

The phone rings again.

It's urgent.

What do I do?

Anybody else wouldn't even think to answer that phone. A visitor would expect the hostess to pick up her phone. I'm not a visitor. The owner of this house, Miss Agneta Larsson, isn't around. I've broken in here to steal confidential information. A thief wouldn't pick up the phone either. A thief wants to remain unnoticed, steal what she needs and get the hell out of here without leaving a trace. I'm not a thief. I'm a spy. I work for the LSD, the Lëtzebuergesch Sécherheet Departement (in English: Luxembourg Spy Department). My job is to gather information. #1 (read: number one), The Boss, pays me to find out. If I don't pick up that phone, I'll never find out who's ringing. It might be an exclusive chance to give my opinion about a free sample of chocolates. It might be a spectacular 50% discount on my life insurance. It might be #1, The Boss, himself, checking if I'm at work. If I don't pick up that phone, I'll never find out...

I pick up the phone.

"Agneta?"

The hardly-a-question is followed by hardly-a-sound, hardly, but enough to notice, enough to slice my soul with a silver dagger, enough to hurt me on my weak spot: it's a sob. I can't stand hearing a woman cry.

Of course, Agneta isn't at home. I wouldn't be here if she were. My colleague #2, The Nerd, hacked the security company that monitors the burglar alarm; Agneta hasn't been at home for almost a week.

"I've been calling you every hour for almost a week. Where have you been?", the woman cries.

I don't know what to say. First, because she says that in Swedish and the MultiTranslate app on my spiPhone doesn't work when a phone whispers Swedish words in my ear. The app only works when my spiPhone picks up spoken language that it grabs with the phone's built-in microphone. The Permanent Voice Recorder does record everything, also what comes in via my earplug, but it saves the words into a text file that I have to open and feed to the MultiTranslate app manually. That takes time. In the spy business, time is a valuable thing. The new spiPhone8 (with the MultiTranslate app integrated with the Permanent Voice Recorder) has already been available for quite some time, but saving money is higher on the LSD priority list than saving time and saving the world, so I hope Santa Claus puts it in my sock next Christmas. Today, it's the 21st of February. I have to do the translations by hand for at least another ten months.

The second problem, answering in Swedish with Agneta's voice, is impossible to solve, even with the spiPhone8. I have to send The Nerd a message about it. Field agents should have every tool they'll need to complete their missions.

I'm not a field agent. I'm #5, The Runner, the Pizza Delivery Boy who runs the errands, so Intelligence can do the real work. #1, The Boss, gave me the order to break in and steal information, only because #4, The Agent, has higher priorities, in Moscow, doing something classified that has to do with the upcoming Football World Championship in Russia.

The crying woman on the other end of the line can't read my thoughts, but she's a woman and her female intuition tells her I'm not Agneta, I'm not even able to understand Swedish.

"Who are you?", she asks, in English.

It must be wonderful to be a woman, having this female intuition you can always rely on. I make a mental note to ask #2, The Nerd, if he can write a Femail Intuition App for the new spiPhone8. Like a SPAM filter, the App should filter the stupid ideas out and let the smart ones pass. I wonder what the Femail Intuition App would say about the idea of installing a Femail Intuition App on my spiPhone...