Spy Games
Organizing case files had been my job since I was an intern. I was a tech supervisor now but since I was one of the only ones that knew how to do them, I was still stuck sorting through an endless stack of paperwork from the latest mission. It had been one of the longer ones and had been almost a year long, which just meant that much more to sift through.
Glancing at the last picture as I put it in it's folder, one of the figures in the back caught my eye. Near the edge of the picture there was a man staring directly at the camera. Usually that wouldn't be a big deal, except this picture had been taken from the inside of a surveillance van while it had been following a corrupt senator in London. Nobody was supposed to know we had been following him and yet this man was staring right at the camera. "I must just be getting paranoid." I said shaking my head and closing the folder before starting on the next one.
I was just about to pack up and leave for the day when the phone rang, sighing "Patterson", I answered.
"Hey, the Boss is calling a meeting first thing in the morning. He told me to tell you to bring all the case files from the six months." Said Jeremy, one of the new interns that was working as a secretary under the Boss for the summer. 'Great,' I thought logging back into my computer 'another all-nighter.'
The Next Day
It was 5 o'clock in the morning when everyone finally stumbled in glaring at the Boss. As soon as everyone was inside, the Boss left the room and came back a few minutes later carrying boxes of donuts and cups of coffee, and after handing a few to each of us, sat down and started shuffling through one of the folders he was holding. After everyone had gotten situated and was in a much better mood, he started the meeting. "We are here because the third mission this month has failed. Can anyone tell me why?" He yelled getting started on a rant about our failures, "How could anyone mess up this bad?" He asked tossing down pictures on the table and naming them "Madrid, we were supposed to protect an ambassador, failed. Beijing, we were supposed to interrogate a mob boss, failed. Iran, assassinate a high-ranking terrorist, failed!" He yelled "What happened?" Glancing at the pictures he had thrown down, I recognized a few of them. In one of them me and my team had been acting as tourist and posed for a group picture with a target in the background. Looking behind the group at the ambassador we were supposed to protect, I saw a man that looked familiar talking to him and shaking his hand. Looking closer I saw it was the same guy I had seen the day before staring at the surveillance van. Disregarding it as coincidence I looked at the Beijing picture. We had waited in front of the hotel and used a hidden camera to take pictures of the inside while we talked to the manager and asked her if she had seen the mob boss we were supposed to talk to. This picture was of the café around the corner of the hotel, but the one thing I noticed most of all was that the same man that had been in the last photos had was in this one too, sitting in the corner opposite of the door with a burger and staring at us as we walked in.
Thinking three times in three different countries was too much of a coincidence , I waited until the Boss ran out of ways to say 'you guys suck' before I cut in, "Boss, who is that?" I asked pointing at the mystery man," He's not on any of our teams so why is he with us on the missions?" The Boss just looked at me like I was an idiot, "Maybe he was on vacation." He suggested sarcastically. "Sir, he's in these too." Said Scott, one of the other supervisors said opening two of the other files I had brought with me, "He was in all five places the same days and times as us, and he's always either looking directly at the cameras or at us." Scott said taking a closer look at the pictures
Boss finally looked at where we were pointing and suddenly got serious and pointed to half of the teams in the room ,"You, I want you to find out who this is! And you," He said pointing to my half " I want you guys to pull all the case files and find where he came from!"
This is my first story, so please tell me what you guys think..