The Swiss Suitcase (LSD, #1)

2. Gunface

Gunface

Rostov is both happy and afraid at the same time. He repeats: "A spy?"

I try my most reassuring smile: "Yes, I'm a spy. It's my daily job to escape from the CIA and the MI6 and all those other secret services. I'm with the LSD..."

"LSD? What's that? Lazy Stupid Dickheads? Lustful Sexual Desires? Long Silly Discussions?"

"LSD stands for Lëtzebuergesch Sécherheet Departement, in English: Luxembourg Spy Department. I'll tell you about that later. We have to go to room 2503, the suite of your boss, but we'll have to do one thing first..."

I take my spiPhone, start the Tracker app, and scan the room. No microphones. When I come closer to Rostov, the indicators turn red. Tracker devices. In Rostov's clothes.

"You're bugged."

I take one of the bathrobes out of the bathroom and throw it to him: "Undress, bare naked, and leave your clothes on the ground. I don't want the one who bugged you to know where we're going. Put on the bathrobe and do it quickly. We have to go."

"But..."

"I don't want to see your butt. Go to the bathroom and do as I told you."

"Can I take my phone with me? My life is in it.", Rostov asks.

I have a better idea. I connect the phone to the Internet, browse for the secure virtual backup disk that I have in the cloud, and transfer the whole content of his phone memory to my secret webspace. Meanwhile, Rostov gets out of his clothes and into the soft white bathrobe that the hotel supplies to every room.

I scan him again: he's clean.

"African and Latin-American spies often put tracker devices in your food. They are as big as a rice grain, so you won't notice it when you eat your soup. They are very efficient and impossible to get rid of, but they can only track you for 36 hours; then you'll lose the tracker via the natural way. That's why American and European spies prefer to plant bugs in your clothes or in personal belongings like your wallet or your pen."

In Rostov's clothes in the bathroom, I find two tracking devices. The first one, in the pocket of Rostov's shirt, looks Chinese or Japanese. It stops working when I try to open it. The other one, in the heel of his shoe, was planted there quite some time ago: "110 volts, rechargeable. That's CIA. The good news is that these are not microphones, just positional trackers. The people who placed them don't consider you important enough to spend valuable resources and devices on hearing what you have to say to yourself. They just want to know where they can find you, and I suppose at least one of them already did." I put the American tracker back where I found it and put the Asian tracker in the pocket of my jacket.

"Now you've found all the bugs, can I put on my clothes again?"

"When you found and killed a flea in the hair of your dog, are you confident you've killed all the fleas? Or does that make you run to the animal shop for chemical weapons for mass flea destruction to kill all the others that you didn't find? I found two bugs, but that's no guarantee that I've found all the bugs. I don't want to take any risk and I don't have a flea collar to put around your neck, so we leave your entire wardrobe here. We go as soon as the backup of the data on your phone has finished."

The data-transfer takes another minute, during which I stand in the corridor to see if danger is coming around the corner, but nothing happens. When Rostov confirms the end of the data transfer, I disconnect the phone. The I-Spy-Smartphone App already deleted itself after completing its job. I leave the phone on the table in the room, so everyone who enters can see it, put the «do not disturb»-sign on the door and we take the lift to the 25th floor.