

Upload the right program and you've got a roving bug you can turn on remotely. Cell phones are basically wireless computers.You can walk right in with your unwanted audience, but you better have a plan to entertain them. Doing a job in broad daylight means easier access but more witnesses.Native antiquities are favorites because their subjective prices make money laundering easy. They send out guns and supplies and get back goods to sell. Intelligence agencies like them because they make it possible for missions to finance themselves. Drug cartels aren't the only organizations who use import-export businesses as fronts.Apply torque, whack it with anything handy, and you're in. If you know the basic type of key you need to spoof, pick out a matching blank, file down the valleys to the center ledge and you have a bump key. All you need to beat a modern tumbler lock is a little information and some Stone Age tools.It's the perfect cover if you need to linger without being bothered, and it gives you a pretext for talking to almost anyone. In today's corporate office, posing as IT works the same way. In medieval Europe, spies used to pose as lepers and plague victims so they could snoop around without being bothered.That's usually a good enough reason to avoid working with crazy people. If they crack, you end up in a shallow grave. Whether you're infiltrating a cartel or spiking a chemical weapons sale, the most dangerous people in any covert op are the ones on your side.What they save by avoiding taxes, they usually spend on overpriced drinks. A money launderer's natural habitat is near rich people.Usually the best approach is to just put on a good poker face and deny everything. There are times in any spy's career when someone, somehow figures out who you are.Fortunately, with a little training and the right kind of hitch knot, all that adrenaline can make you capable of something pretty close to flight. There are some circumstances when flight just isn't the right option. In those moments, you can't listen to your body. When you get cornered, there's a rush of adrenaline as the fight-or-flight response kicks in.They can't make a covert ops supply plane disappear. It doesn't matter how good they are at misdirection and sleight of hand. Watch closely, and you can see how they set up their tricks. Intelligence agencies are like amateur magicians. If you're on domestic soil, the airport's not a bad place to look. Your best bet is to find an active field operative who can't hang up on you. Your old handlers send your calls straight to voice mail. Nobody wants to hear from a burned spy.Michael helps a mathematician with preventing the firm he works for from selling government secrets.
