New version...too much???

Since the beginning of recorded history and earlier, there has been espionage. Joshua led a group of spies into Canaan. King Alfred the Great disguised himself as a bard and infiltrated Danish military camps. The Mongols. The Egyptians. The ancient Greeks and Romans. China had Sun Tzu. India had Chanakya. The CIA, the KGB. All have stories, told through the generations, of espionage and spies.

Espionage has won wars and started them, brought down political figures and helped them rise to power. It is quiet and sublime. Powerful and omnipresent. There, but never seen.

We have all heard stories about espionage and the secret lives of spies. We watch them in the theater or television saving a country or bringing down a regime.

Their success is based on information. They hold secrets that none of us will ever know. We know that spies have helped us win wars and take down governements. But what about the stuff we don't know?

My name is ****** and I am an information gatherer, a spy. I have found out information about things that I will not talk about here. I thought I was important. I thought I had access to the greatest secrets ever. Until.....

Let me start from the beginning. When I started my career, I had a mentor. He taught me everything I know. Everything I have ever accomplished was because of him. He was the best of the best and completed an infinite number of missions successfully. Never got caught, was never suspected. We worked together for numerous years and told each other our innermost thoughts and secrets. So I thought....

Then the day came when I received a phone call that I hoped I would never receive. My partner, my mentor, was hospitilized for a heart attack. I rushed to the hospital to see him. As I was walking down the hall, I spotted a doctor leaving his room. I approached him and asked how he was doing.

"Are you a friend of the family?" he asked.

"Yes," I explained. "I have been his best friend for almost 20 years."

Looking remorseful, he spoke. "This may be the last time you see him. He is not doing well and we are afraid he will not make it through the night. But he is strong. Right now, he is lucid and fully aware that he is not going to live long. We are making him comfortable; that is all we can do."

Thanking the doctor for his honesty, I entered the room.

As I neared the bed, I looked at my friend and mentor. He was a far cry from the man that I knew. He looked small and weak lying there. His eyes were closed, but opened as I approached. Like he knew it was me when I entered the room. He reached out for my arm. Weakly, he pulled me close to the bed.

In a voice barely above a whisper, he started to speak.

"I have something to tell you," he whispered.

"Ssshhh," I replied. "Don't talk. Save your strength."

If ever a whisper could sound like a scream, it did at that moment.

"No!" Then back to the gravelly whisper.

"I must tell you these things. Something needs to be done and you are probably the only one capable of taking care of it."

Silenced, I leaned close and told him to proceed and he began his story.



Since the beginning of time, there have been secrets. Goverment cover ups, conspiracies, answers to questions that we have all needed answered. There are things that governments don't want the average person to know. Things that they don't even want their inner circle to know. My job was to assume responsibility for this information. It was to be hidden away and encoded so it wouldn't get in the wrong hands. Hundreds of years of information. And there have been agents out there who have found out this information that would change the world. I was charged with finding their hidden information. I researched them and solved their puzzles and retrieved their information. I replaced the intelligence I found with a clue to the final "stash". A wealth of information that, in the wrong hands, could change the world.

Somehow there have been others who have heard about the information and are looking for it. I was assigned to you, *****, because you have what it takes. I was to train you in the art of espionage and teach you all that I know. You are to be the "super agent". You need to retrieve this information before those that are trying to find it for all the wrong reasons. We need to get rid of all the clues out in the field and retrieve the stash so others won't find it. Here in my notebook is all the information you will need for each of the separate agents "stashes". Please retrieve them and get rid of all the information.

Now, here is the location you need to go to for the final "stash" of information. Go in my coat pocket and there is a slip of paper there that I need to give to you.



I turned to grab his coat and checked his pockets. Empty! I returned to the bed to ask him if he was mistaken when the "code blue" alarms started going off. A team of doctors and nurses ran in and I watched them for several minutes....Until the man that looked like the doctor in charge pronounced, "Time of death...."

Now what? I have the notebook with all the info on the original "stashes", but there are puzzles to solve and then a way to find the final information. How am I going to do this by myself? I know I can't. I do know that over the years that I have been on the "job" I have met many I could trust with my life. I am going to need help.

So I call upon the people I trust most. Help me solve this before it winds up in the wrong hands.

muddy and amused wrote:SUCKS!