Here’s an example of how it works:
At the beginning of the summer, my parents and I got sent to Iceland to investigate one of their largest banks. The CEO’s family was suddenly driving imported cars, sending their kids to Swiss private schools, and buying homes in Spain with no money down, yet there wasn’t an uptick in the CEO’s yearly income.
That usually means someone’s hiding something, something like cold hard cash, and let’s just say I’m really good at hide-and-seek.
So, my mom gets a job as part of the bank building’s cleaning crew, which pretty much gives her access to everyone’s office, including the CEO’s. She’s an amazing computer hacker, which I think sort of rankles my dad. He’s useless when it comes to electronics. One time, we were in Boston and they got into this huge fight because my dad thought my mom was taking too long to do her job. She just handed him the TiVo remote and said, “Tell me how this works.” And of course he couldn’t, so she was all, “Don’t tell me how to do my job,” and believe me, he doesn’t anymore. He really loves watching Planet Earth on Discovery Channel.
Anyway, my mom gets into the CEO’s office and, of course, has access to his computer. It’s so, so easy to get into someone’s computer, I can’t even tell you. Password protected? Whatever. All you ever need to hack someone’s computer is a copy of their birth certificate and, sometimes, not even that. If the person’s really famous, they’ve probably already talked about their mom in the news, so boom, there’s the mother’s maiden name. Pets, children’s names, the street where they grew up, their place of birth? They’re all password clues, and most people use the same password for everything.
Including the CEO of this company.
(I think my mom was actually sort of disappointed. She likes when she has to do the serious hacking. She says it keeps her young.)
So my mom goes into his computer and sets up a Trojan Horse virus that lets her look at the CEO’s computer from her laptop at home. Sneaky, right? Meanwhile my dad starts looking at the company’s financial records and notices that there were a lot of bank accounts being opened with tiny bits of cash in them, which is what money launderers do to avoid being caught.
And judging from the names on the accounts—all female, all young, and not an Icelandic surname among them—there was an excellent chance that this CEO was involved in human trafficking. What a degenerate, right?
There was definitely a paper trail somewhere—all the e-mails pointed to that—and that paper trail was about to be shredded. My mom hurried up and jammed the shredder the next night, but it meant we had to work fast.
It meant that I had to work fast.
I went down the hall toward the CEO’s office, the fluorescent lights barely lit overhead as I crept past rows and rows of cubicles. It was almost eleven at night, so the employees were long gone by now—there weren’t even any overachieving stragglers. The only sound came from my shoes sliding over the cheap carpet as I stayed close to the walls and turned the corner. I was in total game mode after hanging around for three months; I was ready to play.
Here’s the boring part of my job: I don’t really get to do a lot. I mean, I open safes and I can forge signatures pretty well, but that usually happens at the very end. I’ve never had a case that was all mine, that rested on my shoulders rather than my parents’. I had spent most of my time in Iceland admiring the scenery, rather than kicking ass and taking names. It was cool, I guess, but it was sort of like being stuck in elementary school while everyone else goes to college. I wanted something more.
The CEO’s office door was open just like it was supposed to be, and I could hear the cleaning crew down the hall. My mother was working with the crew tonight as planned; she was the reason the door was unlocked. Personally, I would have rather jimmied the lock open because hi, let’s play to our strengths, but my parents are always about doing things the simple way. It gets annoying sometimes, I can’t lie. “If we wanted to do things the right way, then why are we spies?” I sometimes point out, but I know they’re correct. It’s not about creating excitement; it’s about getting the job done.
That’s the second rule of being a spy: Be beige. Be beiger than beige. Be as average as possible. Be like the cashiers in your grocery store. Could you describe them? Chances are, no. Did you see them? Of course. Do you know their names, even if they were wearing name tags? Probably not. It’s like that.
I know in the movies, spies always have this really cool look, like Angelina Jolie. I’m sorry, but Angelina Jolie would be the worst spy in the world. Who wouldn’t remember looking at someone like Angelina Jolie? My mom always gets really upset whenever we watch movies about espionage. “This is so unrealistic!” she always yells. “Why would you dye your hair pink if you’re trying to stay undercover? Why is she using a drill to open that safe? All that noise and time!” (My dad and I sometimes joke that the unofficial third rule of being a spy is: “Never mention Austin Powers to Mom.” She doesn’t know about that joke, but we think it’s hilarious.)
But she’s right about the drill. You just can’t use it any old time you want, not when the clock’s ticking and your arm’s tired and there’s building security ambling around just one floor below you. A lot of safes, at least ones that I’ve seen, have cobalt shields, and let me tell you, trying to drill through that is the most boring thing in the world and it takes forever. I’m sixteen—I don’t have that kind of time! And if you miss and hit the wrong spot, then you can trigger a bunch of extra locks, which means that you are never, ever going to open up that safe. I’ll spare you the technical details, but trust me when I tell you that it’s bad, very bad. You will not be getting the Safecracker of the Year Award if that happens.