Personal Espionage

To a beige office building of twenty-five floors, on a quiet Saturday morning with maybe fifty people in the whole high-rise, approaches an electrician in a baseball cap. She hands her papers to the security guard at the front desk, who calls up to the 17th floor to confirm the contract. The security guard only briefly notes the name patch on her powder-blue coveralls: “Jen”. A name just common enough, and not her real name.

For this electrician is really an industrial spy, coming to steal security data from an AI company specializing in healthcare coding named Vitatek whose office is on the 16th floor. “Jen” doesn’t know much about healthcare coding or why their data might be valuable to her secretive employer. But she learned quickly how tight Vivatek’s security was, so turned her efforts to the floor above them.

Once she reaches the 17th floor, “Jen” is greeted by one of her bosses, or at least, one of Katrina Jones’s bosses. Katrina Jones was the fake name she used when she pretended to be a temp worker, helping the company on floor 17, Certainty Inc, with their system transfer: sorting through old papers, cabinets and files.

If all this sounds complicated, imagine being the industrial spy who planned it all. Her real name is Felicity Anderson. And for simplicity sake, I’ll refer to Jen aka Karina Jones aka Felicity Anderson as simply “Felicity” for the rest of this story.

The man who met her on the 17th floor was Bob Jenkins. He is a large, amiable man who isn’t big on details. So he didn’t notice that the woman in front of him was the same woman he’d hired from a temp agency three weeks back. After all, the woman in front of him wore heavy eyeshadow around her green eyes, and had red hair poking out from her ball cap. He never suspected that colored contacts and a wig might be involved.

And in either event, this was the secondary reason he was in the office. He’d wanted to call in an electrician to handle a short circuit in the cubicle area. But he also didn’t want to disrupt the normal flow of work, so ordered one for the weekend, the same time the managers had planned for a meeting, so there’d be someone in the office. He’d congratulated himself on this bit of efficiency. Little did he know that Felicity was the reason for the short in the first place.

“We’ll be in all day,take your time. You’re paid by the job, not the hour right?” Was all Bob said to Felicity, and he chuckled to himself as he often did when discussing how little he was paying someone. Felicity nodded and smiled slightly, then Bob strode off to the conference room.

Felicity was left in the main office, with its rows of cubicles, alone. She’d gotten to know her three bosses well enough to know that they’d likely spend hours in the conference room, which would give her more than enough time to get done what she needed to do. But still, the faster she finished, the faster she could be out the door and done with the latest elaborate heist of her long career.

She crouched next to the electrical outlet, the one she’d sabotaged a week back, making it look like she was inspecting it, and listened. When she was certain that no one else was nearby, she snuck to the supply cabinet where she’d hidden the heavier materials she’d need: the transponder and the heavy hand saw. They fit in perfectly behind the old coffee and fax machines that hadn’t been touched in who knew how many years. 

Looking back, she could have just brought a saw as part of her electrician disguise, but she’d hidden this in the office back when her plan was to sneak in late at night, a plan she’d given up as she analyzed the building’s security layout. She chuckled to herself thinking about that brazen plan.

She pulled out the transponder and the hand saw, lifting them over reams of paper and boxes of pencils. She thought of herself as physically fit, but by the time she’d pulled the equipment out her face flushed and she felt a pain in her bicep that might be a pulled muscle. “Age catches up to everyone. Even spies,” she whispered to herself.

Felicity carried the items to the far side of the cubicle space. It was an odd feeling, being in the office where she’d worked for the past three weeks, only now empty, especially without the background static of running computers and office chatter. The space felt completely different in near silence.

Felicity dropped the transponder in a corner of the office behind a beveled table hosting a pot of devil’s ivy. Next she took the saw to the wall where the busted switch was and carved out a hole, the whirring of the saw echoing in a cascade throughout the large space. If anyone came snooping, it would look like she was hard at work on her assigned task.

And in fact, the 2nd of her bosses, the one she’d spent the most time with, showed up in the office mere moments later after she’d turned on the saw.

“Oh! Loud! Loud!” Margaery Winkler called and waved her arms. Felicity shut down the saw and turned to her supervisor. This was the moment of truth. It was unlikely Margaery would recognize Felicity behind her eyeshadow, green contact lenses, and red wig, but they’d spent a lot of time together the last three weeks…

The other woman’s eyes lit up… in recognition? No, surprise. And small satisfaction in finding a woman serving as electrician. 

“How long do you think you’ll be? This can’t be a big problem can it?”

Felicity just shrugged. She decided on the drive over that silence would be part of her character. Best not to fake a different voice if she didn’t have to.

“Well, I hope you won’t be too loud.” 

Another shrug in response, and Margaery was quickly down the hall toward the conference room. There would be three of them in there, all three of her bosses from her brief time with Certainty Inc.

Felicity finished her incision, then returned to the transponder. This would be the most fraught moments of the heist. If someone walked in and caught her kneeling back here, she wouldn’t have a great explanation. 

She turned the saw back on and sliced a hole in the floor, through carpet and wood and vinyl. She worked fast, the cut didn’t have to be neat. And with the earlier sawing it shouldn’t draw attention. Quick as a cat, she put the transponder in the cavity, flicked it on, and replaced the flap of vinyl and carpet square. It should be directly over the mainframe for Vitatek, hopefully close enough. The toughest part was done, and no one had seen her.

She returned to the busted electrical panel and pulled out her tablet to monitor the transponder download. To a casual glance she might seem to be checking electricity levels, and not a mass transfer of Vitatek’s internal data. 

Felicity also ran a separate application, a listening application. She’d bugged the conference room just this past Thursday and wanted to keep tabs on the only other people in the office. If any of them had recognized her, or grew suspicious of her work, she’d want to know on a moment’s notice so she could bail.

She put in her ear-buds, then faced the hole she’d made next to the faulty switch, pretending to work but intent on listening. She’d stuck the bug to the top of a framed inspirational poster that read “Build Bridges, Not Walls.” The irony that they were an information security company wasn’t lost on her.

It took several moments before Felicity’s brain adjusted to the acoustics of listening to people she couldn’t see. But it was soon clear that all three of her bosses were there, all lively and laughing. She couldn’t imagine three people that loved meetings as much as those three.

May as well introduce them properly:

Bob Jenkins we’ve already met: tall, broad, middle-aged with an ample belly and equally ample mustache. Always smiling. Seeks to be everyone’s friend and thinks that makes up for his tendency to throw unexpected work on an underling. Likes meetings even more than the other two.

Margaery we’ve also already met. She wears power suits with shoulders that would have fit in the 80s. She relishes being in charge and doesn’t mind coming off as rude. She took Felicity under her wing early, showing her the ropes and glorying whenever her new temp worker asked some naive question. Felicity had disliked Margaery at first, but came to appreciate her mentor’s free-wheeling swagger.

Then there was Julius Sampson, who arrived early, as he always does. A slight man with small, technical hands. Quick with a sarcastic comment, and the most abrasive of the three. Felicity was always surprised how quickly he jumped to whenever a meeting got planned.

Felicity had never learned what the exact pecking order was with these three. They appeared to treat each other as equals. Their conversation was well in progress. All three were already warmed up, laughing and talking over each other at times. 

“You know none of them would have been willing to come in on a Saturday.” This was Bob.

“At least, not without moping about it,” Julius added.

“Most waste so much time on hobbies which are basically just work anyway. Why wouldn’t they want to make money at the same time? Priorities! You can’t do everything by teleconference!” Margaery said, surely gesticulating.

Bob chimed in: “Take this meeting. We couldn’t have done some of it over remote call. We couldn’t check the supply closet that way. And we couldn’t look over the official hiring documents.” 

“And we couldn’t have had an electrician in,” Margaery added.

“Yeah, we’d have missed getting to see a real, live, female electrician. Can you believe it?” Bob chuckled.

“Your first time seeing a woman in pants?” Julius didn’t laugh, but Felicity could tell he was smiling.

“Now. Now. Let’s get to the items we need to then chew the fat later.” Margaery took control. 

The three went on to discuss a variety of topics, all the while the progress bar on Felicity’s program slowly inched upwards. She didn’t know exactly what would be in the files, didn’t really want to know, but she was getting paid a pretty penny for it and had worked for three months to get to this point. Fortunately Vitatek felt like a shady organization, promising to use AI to make health insurance companies more money. That didn’t exactly make her Robin Hood for stealing their data, but it didn’t make her The Grinch either.

Felicity’s mind snapped back to the present when Bob mentioned her false persona: “Can you believe we have a woman electrician? Where else is feminism going to go? No offense Marge.” To which Margaery replied “None taken.”

A shuffling of papers followed as they looked over some legal documents, which Julius referred to as toilet paper. Next they discussed office supplies and Felicity grew antsy thinking they were going to come check the supply closet and whether they’d notice anything amiss. Fortunately they agreed to put it off “til the end of the meeting.”

Felicity’s mind wandered as they discussed payroll and prospective clients. Then, eventually, they got to a topic that piqued her interest. “Now then, we need to talk about who to take on full time,” Bob declared

“I’d like to make a case for Katrina Jones,” Margaery jumped in right away.

“Seriously?” Julius responded, his voice dripping with skepticism. 

Jen’s guts turned to mush. This shouldn’t matter to her, that was a character she’d invented they were about to talk about, a character she’d crafted specifically to be a clutz, a milksop, someone who tried hard but underachieved. Yet somehow that person, that person who didn’t exist, who was just one of a string of false identities, suddenly mattered.

“You’re just going to make a case for that girl because she follows you around like a puppy.”

“Girl? She’s a couple years older than I am!”

“Okay, you want her on because she’s cute then.”

Cute? Felicity had not crafted Katrina to be cute. She wore frumpy skirts in mismatched colors for a reason!

“Now gentlemen, hear me out. Katrina is a solid worker and improving. Her mistake rate, quickly improved from average to much better than average.”

Felicity had intended to be mistake prone… she’d made several accounting errors on purpose. When she disappeared one day she’d wanted none of them to care that she was gone. How did this happen? How many mistakes did the average office worker make?

“Fair. She’s not fast, but mistakes cost us so much time and aggravation. Plus she’ll be easy to hold out raises from.” This was Julius. 

Then laughter. Laughter from all three. Felicity’s back crawled. She felt her face flush. Why did this bother her?

“But seriously. Are you two okay then moving her to the top of the heap?”

“Not yet. Not yet,” Bob repeated. “Let’s do this properly. Pull out her performance report and let’s go over it line by line.”

“Very well. Let’s see… she’s been with us three weeks,” Sound of shuffling papers “We took her on from the Miracle Temp Agency on the 28th, this was her first temp job with that agency…”

Felicity ripped out her ear buds. The last thing she wanted was to hear her fake past gone over with a fine-tooth comb. She couldn’t even tell what bothered her. That they liked her other persona? That they sought to take advantage of her? That the person they wanted to keep was a ghost that they would never see or hear from her again? Or that this ghost had made a bigger impact on this office than she, the real she, had on any group of people in a long time.

Felicity cast her eyes to the progress bar: 80%. Ugh. Her mind sought some distraction. Maybe she could grab a magazine from one of the cubicles, or play a game on her tablet. Tetris maybe. Just for a few minutes.

No! Distraction wasn’t allowed for someone in her dangerous profession. She shouldn’t have taken the ear buds out. She hurriedly popped them back in…

Nothing. Was the bug still working? Had she turned it off? No, she could still hear the fan that had been running in the conference room. They must have left-

Suddenly a strong hand on her shoulder. “What ‘cha listening to?” Bob’s familiar baritone. She whirled around. 

“Whoa, calm down now lady.” She must be wearing her fear all over her face. She must say something.

“I was listening to, uh, Taylor Swift.”

“Figures.”

“See, she’s not some outlier among women like you thought,” Julius called. The other two were heading for the glass door leading out of the office.

“Anyway, we’re going to lunch. Are you done yet?”

“No. Not for a bit.”

“We’ll be back in an hour. You can wait for us or just leave your invoice.” Margaery gestured, flipping her hand downward, an odd, dismissive gesture, as if this made the points more clear.

Felicity felt she should say something else, but suddenly all three of them were out the door, the glass sliding into place and ending her relationship with them forever.

All that work she’d put in: to invent and stick to a persona, to ingratiate herself, to sabotage the circuit and set up the fake electrical company, to keep everything straight in her head. And they just… walked out and left her alone in the office. They’d barely even looked at her, hadn’t noticed that anything was amiss. She could finish the job, fix the circuit, and leave at her leisure. It might be months before anyone on the 16th or 17th floor tracked anything back to her, if they ever did.

What was even the point of being a master spy if no one was even paying attention?