Wednesday, August 28, 2013

How to Drive an Eavesdropper Crazy

August 28, 2013

(Just a little something I wrote in response to the surveillance program.)




How to Drive an Eavesdropper Crazy

Agent Straub pulled the headphones from his ears and practically screamed, “Somebody make it stop! Drive a red-hot spike through my eardrums! Anything!”

“What’s up?” asked a colleague.

“This incessant singing. One line, over and over. All day. The next day it’s another one. A song, or a snatch of a song. Or humming.

“Off-key,” he added bitterly.

His fellow-agents chuckled, but they sympathized, too. Whoever thought that listening in on this particular apartment was going to yield information on possible terrorist attacks had some ba-a-ad intel. Work, the occasional meeting with friends, TV shows…Nothing, but nothing to indicate the woman was a risk. Six months they’d been listening, and not a whiff of anything political or even unpleasant. Just her incessant singing. It was time to pull the plug.

Six months and one week after they’d started the surveillance, one week after they’d pulled the plug, another listener put on his headphones and began to take notes. He thought that a six-month lead time was a bit much for trying to lull any possible eavesdroppers, but those were orders. Now, to business.

One line off-key. One line on pitch. Again on pitch. Off-key. On pitch. On pitch. On pitch. On pitch. …

“Tuesday eight a.m. Central Market. …”


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

NIIIIICE! You should post this on facebook AND send it to your mother!

Peg said...

Definitely will send it to Mom.