End Game

Karen's place

"I'm going to visit a friend of mine," said Min. "Want to come?"

"Sure," said Tim.

Min had refused to reveal more. "You'll see," she had replied breezily to Tim's variously worded enquiries. "There's still good money to be made working in tech," was the most she conceded, a response to Tim's asking how her friend managed to live in such an affluent part of town, an inner-city neighborhood of renovated wooden townhouses.

The friend welcomed Min with a hug, Tim with a shake of the hand – finessing the distinction between the two acts with a subtle choreography that left nobody feeling awkward or offended. "I'm Karen," she told him as she ushered the pair into her living room, a polished wooden floor softened by a large and intricately patterned rug and elegantly arranged with furniture that looked new but was of a design to match the age of the building.

Karen's hair was as dark as Min's, but otherwise the two of them could not be less alike, the friend being taller and more athletic, rendering Min even more waif-like in comparison. Overriding that, though, was the way she was dressed for the heat, exposing large areas of tattooed skin interspersed with piercings and other forms of personal jewelry. The sort of body adornment you might expect to find on those women who sell crystals and paraphernalia from street market stalls. With all these adornments she should have looked more witch-like than Emmy-Lee, yet somehow that wasn't the impression conveyed.

"So this is the guy?" For a moment Tim became a specimen under examination. Then Karen's expression softened, leaving Tim with a peculiar feeling that, rather than be offended by the scrutiny, he should be grateful that she should deign to pay him any attention at all.

"Oh, never mind him," said Min. "I've got it." She held up her hand with fingers curled downward, looking like a very unlikely looking Pope who expected Karen to kiss the large ring that adorned her finger. Karen did indeed take the hand, but rather than a kiss, she grasped it in one of her own while using the other to wiggle loose the ring.

"Let's see what we've got, shall we?" Karen led them into a small side room. Whatever its purpose might have been in the original construction, it was now a small studio office, with a work desk taking up much of the room while the rest was populated with various boxy objects perched wherever space allowed.

Karen took one of these and inserted the ring.

"Did you make that?" Min asked.

"This?" Karen held up the device, which did indeed look rather homemade. "You think it would be this ugly if I did?" She took a cable and attached the contraption to a PC. A few key taps and mouse clicks later an image appeared on the screen – some sort of abstract blob.

"I had a few trial runs," said Min.

A few more taps and blobs, then a recognizable image appeared. The resolution wasn't great and the color thin, but there was no mistaking what it depicted: one of their colleagues busy at his work desk.

"So the ring is a spycam?" said Tim, earning withering looks from the two women. Clearly statements of the obvious were more snakes than ladders in the game of spies.

Tim refused to be deterred. "So you're like Q? The boffin who comes up with all the cool gadgets?"

"Does that make you James Bond?" asked Karen, not unkindly.

Tim just shrugged modestly. "What do you plan to do with the pictures?" he asked.

This time his contribution was received with a modicum of respect. "We have some faces," said Karen. "Now we need some names to match."

"That's Keith," said Tim, using his helpful voice.

"Yes, but Keith who?"

"Dunno," Tim conceded.