Don't cheat.....read the story before looking at the collage.
The telephone rang. "Hello. Is Mrs. Crabtree there?"
"Sorry. You have the wrong number." Hangs up.
Mary hurried to her bedroom, throwing off the clothes she had on and donning a pair of medium grey slacks and shirt and black boots. She pulled the dark blue trench coat off the hanger, then reached to the back of the closet and grabbed a red purse. She opened it and checked inside. Yes, the burner phone is in there. She ties her long blonde hair into a bun and covers it with a black stocking cap and hurries out the door of her apartment and down the hall to the elevator. Getting off on the main floor, she walks outside and hails a cab. She takes the cab seven blocks and gets out. She waits at the bus stop for the number 9 bus, dismissing the four other buses that stop prior. She rides the bus to its ninth stop and gets out. She goes into Abrahams Deli and orders a pastrami on a bagel. She takes her sandwich to the park across the street, finds a bench and sits down. She glances at her watch, then eats the sandwich. After exactly 15 minutes, she gets up and walks three blocks to a bus stop. She boards the number 17 bus and rides it nine blocks and gets out and walks across the street to Lou's Neighborhood Bar and Grill. She enters the bar and approaches the bartender. She says with a slight laugh in her voice, "You must be Lou." He grunts and replies, "No. Lou was the name of the bar when I bought it. My name is Petra."
Mary sits and orders a martini, dry, shaken. Petra looks at her with a bewildered look on his face. "You're the first person to ever order a Martini here. I think I remember how to make one." Mary laughs and looks towards the restrooms. "Back in a flash", she says with a little bit of flirtation in her voice. She walks down the hall and steps into the Lady's Room. She locks the door and turns on the light, then reaches up and unscrews the light bulb, just enough for it to go out. A hidden door opens in the wall and Mary steps inside as the door closes behind her. "Welcome. You remember instructions very well. Were you followed?"
"No"
"Sit", pointing to a chair. "Your handler will be in momentarily."
In case you were wondering, Mary, not her real name, is a spook, a "sleeper" actually, for a foreign country. For the last three years, she has been working as a lower level secretary at the government's intelligence agency, using her skills and beauty to glean information from other employees and another spook or two. The phone call she received was her code phrase to be activated and Abrahams Deli and Lou's Neighborhood Bar and Grill are run by clandestine agents. Her handler had been alerted at her arrival at both places.
Her handler enters the room and sits down across from her. He explains to her that her assignment is to place a bomb in the mainframe of the computer at her office. This bomb will cripple the agency long enough for the planned sabotage of military bases and governmental buildings to commence. Upon hearing this, Mary shook her head. "It can't be done. The security is too tight. The passageway to the mainframe is laced with electric eye lasers from the ceiling to 6 inches above the floor and there is no way to get past them without activating the alarm."
"Are there cameras or security guards?"
"No. With the security system, they don't think they are necessary".
Her handler stepped out of the room and returned 20 minutes later. "There is a way. We have developed a drug that changes a person's size, according to the dosage. A second drug is the antidote that restore the person to their previous size. We call it "The Alice Drug", as in Alice inWonderland. With this drug, you can shrink yourself to as small as 5 inches tall, walk under the lasers and plant a bomb which would destroy their computers. The bomb is the size of a blueberry, but powerful enough to level a two story brick house."
Mary looked at him with a WTF? look. But she said, "Okay, let's go."
Her handler gave her the drug and the antidote and the bomb, giving her the instructions how and where to plant it. Mary went back through the hidden door in the restroom, back into the bar and paid for her nonconsumed drink and left. She took a similar route back to her apartment, switching buses and cabs and some walking to ensure she was not being watched.
On the day she was to complete her mission, she went to work as normal, her ID and a smile allowing her to bypass security. She followed her normal work day, typing, translating, transcribing digital audiotapes until about an hour before the end of her shift. She dropped her pencil to the floor and when she reached down to retrieve it, she hid the antidote bottle behind her surge protector strip. When her shift ended, she went down to the woman's locker room, signing in to use the sauna. When no one was in the locker room, she stripped naked, putting everything in her locker. She placed the bomb on the floor and opened the bottle of the Alice drug and drank it. She nearly immediately shrunk to five inches tall. Mary picked up the bomb and ran to the cold air return vent and slipped between the tines. She followed the route she had memorized, gradually making her way to the basement. She saw no one around and she climbed out of the vent and started what would be to her, a one mile walk to the area the mainframe was located. She rounded a corner and came face to face with a rat. A hungry looking rat. She began to back pedal away from the beast when she felt her bare foot "squish" on something. She stopped and looked down and saw she was standing on a glue trap. Mary tried to pull her foot free, but it was stuck fast. The rat approached her, sensing an easy meal. It crouched down and sprang at her. She tried to duck, but lost her balance, falling backward onto the trap. The rat missed her and also fell onto the trap, its entire body stuck to the glue. Now Mary realized her feet, butt, hands, forearms, shoulders and hair are all stuck in the glue. Mary and rat were both futilely trying to free themselves, but they were held fast by the adhesive. As she lay there, trying to configure a plan, she felt a rhythmic vibration through the ground. The vibration turned into the sound of approaching footprints, right up to where she lay imprisoned on the glue trap. She could barely turn her head, but she could see the toe of a security officer work boot. She looked up and saw the face of a security guard she had slept with (for information) looking down on her. "What the Hell?" he said as he knelt down to get a better look. He took his radio off of his belt but put it back. Mary was still struggling to free herself, feeling quite vulnerable with all her lady parts in clear view of the guard.
After a moment, the guard pulled a knife out of his pocket and ran the tip of the blade between the rat and Mary, separating the trap into two halves. He picked up the half with the rat (and the tiny bomb which he didn't notice) and tossed it in the trash bin. He then picked up the half with Mary and examined it and her, the terror in her eyes plainly, and quite arousingly, evident.
As he knelt there, gazing at this tiny, beautiful and helpless naked girl, he realized that he had a dilemma of conscience ....."Do I report this and turn her in or just keep quiet and keep her for myself?"
) when she smelled food...........
