Spy Tips on Creating a Safe House, Approaching Spies, and more
Any high-security function is going to have a lot of oversight, a lot of meetings, a lot of bureaucrats checking up on each other. In all the confusion of the big event, it’s easy for another bureaucrat to just… show up. The important thing is to disappear before people can ask questions. If they do decide to ask questions, you just have to hope you’re in a building with a lot of hallways, a good service basement, and plenty of exits. But in the end, sometimes making an escape is just about being willing to do what the guy chasing you won’t.
Convincing a bully to back down is usually just a matter of showing you’re not afraid of him. Of course, some bullies have guys with .357 magnums. Then you change tactics.
When faced with superior force, you can do two things. You can retreat quietly, or you can attack with as much fanfare as possible.
Outfitting a safe house is about two things. You need to know if someone’s coming, and you need to know how the folks you’re protecting are going to get out of there if they do. If you can’t be on babysitting duty all the time, you need to make sure that you know the minute something’s wrong. A thirty-five-dollar outdoor floodlight has a decent motion detector on it. Wire that to a cellphone, and you’ve got a remote alarm system that will call you if there’s trouble.
I love commuters. Anybody who drives the same route to work every day, it’s like they’re doing all the work for you, and a punctual commuter, a guy who’s in the same place every morning at 8:36 AM, it’s almost too easy.
Threaten any serious criminal organization, and they’re going to do one of two things. They’ll send someone to make a deal… Or they’ll send someone to make a corpse. Either way, you’ve got something to work with.
Approaching a spy in the middle of a job gives you a lot of leverage. They’re playing a delicate game, and the last thing they want is someone coming in and smashing their delicate game with a brick.
Basic rule of bodyguarding – never fight with the protectee around, mostly, because if they happen to catch a stray bullet, you just lost your job.