I stifled a sneeze for the fourteenth time today. When your nose is shoved beside a dusty floor sweep and you are stuck in that position for around five hours boredom takes on a new meaning, and I thought the life of an industrial intelligence freelancer would be all glamour. Granted that time in Laos getting pictures of Hansra Corperation's CTO with that underage tranny hooker was a lot more exciting than this assignment, but a freelancer doesn't get the glamour work often. Usually my job is the kind that is more likely to get me prosecuted for B&E than to get me the girl at the end of the day, but it's a living.
This assignment was particularly fun jaunt into my past. The client, let us live it there for names, wanted to acquire some superconductor research from a high profile scientist at a first rate university. Though I tend to avoid digging too deeply into my client's motives I am pretty sure they want to reverse engineer the work and manufacture a paper trail to indicate their prior invention of the technology in any patent dispute. One of the company's disposable flunkies contacts an encoded site that I maintain, and the deal was laid out in typical businesslike fashion. There are some advantages to providing companies with a highly specialized service, no dickering on the price.
My client needed the information in a limited timeframe, which meant that I had to rush prep for the job, never a good thing. I had a couple of things going for me. Foremost my youthful looks meant that I didn't look odd sulking around campus, and my plain features meant no one remembered me even if they did notice me. Yeah, I know you all thought secret agents looked like Daniel Craig, well that is only true if you want the other guy to pick you out from twenty paces and pump you full of armor piercing rounds at ten. The ability to look like everyone else is an essential feature in my career. I also studied chemistry when I did go to college, meaning that I could slip into the appropriate buildings on campus and chat away with other students to get the scoop on the layout of the lab I needed.
Now the bad news, the lab I needed to get into was a high priority target and therefore on heavy rotation for security. It wasn't the kind of security you would find in any corporate target (or even your standard paranoid's home), but it would pose a problem given the timeframe I had. The lab's hard systems would be easy to bypass and the building's physical barriers were a joke; but security personnel took their job seriously, making rounds on a far too regular basis for uninterrupted work. Given that the client wanted to make sure the target didn't know the work had been copied this was a problem.
It took me four days to find the chink in the proverbial armor. No security system is any better than the people running the system, and one of the security guards was far less dedicated than the rest. Even better was the fact that he was scheduled for the graveyard shift. Four days in and I was sure he simply relied on whatever student worker was on duty at the building's front desk to report a problem before he came over to check things out. As long as I could evade or fool a hapless, poorly paid student seat warmer I would be home free. I planned to finish the job the next night and go spend my healthy fee on the nearest beach that served a halfway decent margarita with busty waitresses in the background.
That brings me back to the broom closet and my sneezing dilemma. My plan was to hold up in a very small, but inconspicuous storage closet until late at night and then extract myself and finish the job. So I sat patiently through and afternoon and well into the night counting stifled sneezes. Sunlight slowly faded to red under the door and was replaced with the cool slightly blue light of fluorescent light. The sounds of passing students slowed and were replaced by the occasional professorial discourse or harried footsteps of a grad student. Eventually even the fluorescent lights were turned off and silence filled the halls.
After counting to a thousand I extracted myself from the closet and moved the under repairs sign that I had placed nearby to keep away prying eyes. A quick walk down the hall brought me to Dr. Suli's lab, the one adjacent to my target's lab. I easily picked the lock on the lab door and quickly moved up through the drop ceiling of the lab. I am always surprised how much people will spend on a keypad lock, and yet neglect the fact that walls don't typically continue up through drop ceilings. A quick shuffle across the ceiling supports put me above my target and after sliding a small piece of insulated glass over the only IR motion detector in the room I dropped down into the room. The job was a simple riffle and copy so I dumped the contents of his intranet (a six letter password, please) into a pocket hard drive and scanned relevant documents with a pocket scanner. One quick once over and making sure I hadn't disturbed things too much and I was back through the ceiling.
I cleaned up in Dr. Suli's lab and slipped back into the hall. I had two options, to put myself back in the broom closet (not appealing at all) or to try and slip past the student at the front desk and walk out the front door. I opted to try my luck with the student and proceeded down to the first floor. Coming from behind the front desk I had the element of surprise, but the desk was situated in such a way that I would have to interact with the student to get through the door.
The student had her back to me, and I could see it was a young woman. Her taste in clothes seemed to tend towards the frumpy and loose end of the spectrum, so I had little to go on about how she looked other than the fact that she had long chestnut brown hair and it was pulled back in a tight ponytail, revealing a slender and pale neck. Beyond her I saw the front door and noticed that the lighting was adjusted so that the front desk could see outside, but it was obvious that people outside couldn't see in.
I snuck a little closer to the desk and listened as the woman talked on her cell phone. Her voice was a little deeper than average, with a husky overtone that most men would describe as sexy. Her hands had slender fingers with well manicured, deep red nails. The conversation was obviously with a close girlfriend. She absently twirled her ponytail as she talked. "...yeah, I know Steve said he was sorry, but seriously I caught him with that bitch Amber riding him like a pony. His dick was so far up her cunt I don't know if he can ever get the stink of that slut off him." At least the conversation was interesting, if one sided. "No way will he ever get another chance with me, I'm just going to bum it out for a while before I think about men again, or just go look for a good revenge fuck... I don't know yet."
I don't know why I thought it would be a good idea but I figured charm would be my way past this woman. I glanced over in a nearby mirror and fussed up my hair to roughly approximate the current style. I knew I wouldn't wow any GQ stylists, but I was hoping I could charm a recently scorned college coed. A quick fuss of the clothes and I sauntered up to the desk, making sure to make enough noise so that the desk clerk had time to hear me and finish off her conversation. She glanced back my way and took me in with a glance. I found her to be cute, but by no means stunning. She had a small pouty mouth and deep brown eyes, but overall she would have been the best friend that you stuck your wingman with for drinks while you went and banged her hot friend in the coat room. Her mouth screwed up in a tight purse as she looked me over.
"I didn't realize anyone was still in the labs, can I see your ID so I can record it for the security guys." Here hand opened up in anticipation of my compliance. Always the professional, I had filched an ID from a student earlier in the day, he had looked close enough to pass a cursory inspection. The woman, Dawn according to her nameplate, took my ID gave it a quick glance and slid the magnetic strip through her computer. She glanced at the screen and raised an eyebrow. "So Lance, why is a history major doing in the chemistry labs this late?"
Damn I hate big brother, time to earn my pay. "Actually Dawn I doubt you are going to believe me if I told you... it actually sounds pretty stupid."
"Try me, or I'm going to have to call security, and the guard on duty right now isn't the nicest."
"Okay, I had a friend let me into a lab earlier today so that I could stay after hours, don't ask I don't want to rat him out."
"So were you making X or something."
