The sound of voices, of rising columns in the house of learning
Young voices in chorus and lifting minds of high pursuit
A purse of canvass fastened by a string of wicker
Waiting for its owner, a palm stretched to the future
Young voices in chorus and lifting minds of high pursuit
A purse of canvass fastened by a string of wicker
Waiting for its owner, a palm stretched to the future
This quatrain is all about learning. I know this only because he said so in the first line. It reminds me of one operation I was involved in – a textbook example of what not to do. I thought it was a simple surveillance job and I spent many weeks trailing my subject, a beautiful and intelligent 30-something woman. I was hired on to figure out why she wanted a clerical job at a credit card company. An earlier vetting process discovered that she was using an alias and was a recipient of a PhD in Physics from MIT. Nothing was adding up. So I spent days and weeks trying to get close to her and strike up a conversation. I finally followed her to a bookstore and got close enough to say something. At this point, I was really rusty with the ladies and when I finally got the chance, all that came out of my mouth was, “I can tell you give your hairdresser good tip because your hair looks real fine”. She looked to me and said, “Oh, thanks” smiled at me and walked away. For days, I was kicking myself for that amateur one liner.
It wasn’t for another week until I got close to her again, this time it was at a Café. She was sitting alone by the corner reading a book. I walked up to her and finally introduced myself using my cover name, “Hello, I’m Brando, I apologize about that introduction at the bookstore and the comment about your hair. I hope that didn’t embarrass you". “Oh no", she said and pointed to the seat inviting me to join her”. “I actually liked it, it was different. I told my hair dresser about your line and, he enjoyed it. Please, won’t you join me?”
We spent the next two hours talking about run of the mill things – the movies, sports, music and anything a clerk might be interested in. But I want to see if I could make her slip up and asked her a zinger that only a Physics virtuoso could answer. I did this to see if she’ll give up the pretense. “Why do you think quantum mechanics and general relativity are incompatible?" She looked at me with delight as if she had found a person to share her tiny part of the world that not very many people understood. “Well, Eistein said, “according to the general theory of relativity, gravitation occupies an exceptional position with regard to other forces, particularly the electromagnetic forces, since the ten functions representing the gravitational field at the same time define the metrical properties of the space measured”.
It was a Freudian slip. I didn’t say I word, but we both knew she’s been outed – her cover was blown. She was not an entry-level employee by any measure but a high caliber thinker of genius proportions. We both knew it now. Then, she fidgeted a little and said, “I’m sorry, I have to go now but meet me at my hotel room on Wednesday when I get back from a trip and we can continue our conversation. She gave me a hotel business card and wrote down her hotel room number – Room 335. Don’t call, just come up at 6PM, dinner will be waiting”. I didn’t know what to think of it but made plans to see her.
On the day of the appointment, as instructed, I went up to her room without calling and knocked on the door. It wasn’t very long before all hell broke lose. Two retirement aged women named Ethel and Gretel wearing nightgowns opened the door and upon seeing me started running and jumping up and down screaming – “It’s him, the peeping Tom. Heelllpppp! Secuuritttyy! Somebody, call the cops.” I stood there with a bouquet of flowers and a bottle of expensive wine I couldn’t afford, dumbfounded.
It wasn’t until I was sitting in jail that I had a chance to think things over. If the PhD wasn’t a giveaway, I was really playing with fire. After the meeting at the café, the subject had hired two actors and booked them in the hotel room. She instructed them to call hotel security every night of the week reporting a Peeping Tom attempting to violate their privacy and gave my description – height, hair color, eye color and approximate weight. By the time I had knocked on the door, the hotel security had already written up three reports on me before I even stepped inside the hotel lobby for the first time. It took several days to get the whole thing straightened out. I had to show receipts and a number of videotapes from other establishments I was visiting at the time of the alleged incidents just to prove my alibi. It was a nightmare.
What the Yestradamus is really saying is “Think of all the angles”. Before you come up to a hotel room, call the room from the hotel lobby phone first. If you don’t, there is no way of telling what will be waiting for you behind the door. In my case, I had no idea what was behind door number 335. It turned out to be something that I really wasn’t expecting and it wasn't pretty.
(Analyst 147X)
