Taking The Cake!
I work for the CIA. I always have and probably always will. They tell you that being a spy is going to be exciting. It isn’t. There is a lot more paperwork involved than the movies would suggest. It involves more photocopying than HBO would have you believe. The only fun part is when you get sent undercover. When that happens, you never know what is going to happen. One day you could be infiltrating a gang of rogue chess master terrorists, the next you are juggling oranges with the mafia. It is a truly unique profession, as this story will demonstrate.
I was called into the operations center one day. This only ever happened when I was to be assigned a task. As soon as I got there, my superiors were all looking rather sheepish, like guilty puppies sat next to a pile of chewed shoes. Basically, they were embarrassed. It was the Deputy Director’s birthday later in two weeks’ time. The whole management structure had chipped and made him the most enormous and remarkable cakes. It had taken up $100,000 of CIA funding and all of its cutting-edge technology to bake. It was a cake that was going to go down in history. Unfortunately, there had been a raid at the operations center and the cake had been stolen. Intelligence gathered had ruled out any connections with terrorism but instead linked to it being a practical joke by the FBI.
Throughout that day, I was briefed on my new assignment. My mission was to infiltrate the FBI to identify the location of the cake before performing an elaborate extraction and getting it back to its rightful place at the CIA. My cover story was simple. I was to tell the FBI that I was a CIA agent who had resigned and was looking for a new job. When entering their building for an interview, I was to locate the cake before the FBI could figure out what was going on.
So, I carried out the plan. I fake-resigned from the CIA and went for my interview at the FBI. However, when I arrived for the interview, I was not left unattended even for one second. I was taken to their mission control room and informed immediately that I had been given the job. They also told me that I had a mission, which I needed to embark on immediately. So as not to blow my cover, I accepted the job and the mission. During the briefing, the fate of the cake was revealed to me. The FBI had sent it over to the United Kingdom to prevent any CIA agents coming to take it. It was being guarded by MI6. My assignment was to go undercover to MI6 in the guise of a disgruntling defecting American spy. There, I was to monitor the status of the cake and make sure those greedy Brits didn’t have it all for themselves. It was for their own good, British people have bad enough teeth as it is without needing sugary foods.
I arrived in London and handed myself into the British secret service. An excruciatingly polite agent greeted me and informed me that they were glad to have me. I think that’s what he said, anyway. He was so posh I could barely understand a word he said. It was as if he permanently had a mouth full of marbles. I hated England. Luckily, I wasn’t going to be there for long.
On my first day, I found the cake. It was locked in a top security vault. Well, I had fulfilled my obligation to the FBI. The Brits hadn’t eaten the cake and weren’t going to. Mission successful. My mission from the CIA, on the other hand, was far from complete. How was I going to extract the cake from here without detection? The vault was monitored by state-of-the-art technology. There was only one thing for it, I would have to take the cake overtly and make sure I avoided capture before I escaped.
I used my security pass to access the vault and walked over to the cake. Before I could get there, I was tackled by both surly and burly security operatives. He dragged me to the Director’s office, where I was to be interrogated. The Director was surprisingly understanding. He did not suspect me of espionage but instead believed that I wanted the cake for myself. He informed me that the MI6 culinary agents were baffled at how such a cake could have been made by the Americans. It was a thing of brutal technical beauty. As such, MI6 wanted to place me within the CIA undercover, to try and find out how such an impressive piece of dessert food had been constructed. Once the information had been fed back, MI6 would be able to make their own cakes and no one in London would have a bad birthday ever again.
My protestations were in vain and I was dispatched back to America. This was an awkward scenario. I had failed my mission and was returning without cake. It was going to be an uncomfortable reunion with my superiors. Perhaps I would even have to answer to an extremely hungry Deputy Director. In any case, I could not refuse this mission without blowing my cover. So, I hopped on the plane back to America and away from those awful British dudes. I did not need a cover story this time. Everyone knew who I was.
Confidence was key on that day. Perhaps I could style it out by just pretending that I had succeeded. Perhaps I could say the mission was impossible. Perhaps the CIA would just forgive my failure. If I was positive enough, everything would be okay. That positivity lasted all of about 15 seconds. Upon arrival, I was met by my old boss, who was flanked by a hungry-looking Deputy Director in a party hat.
Today was his birthday.
I was screwed…
Written and Published by Govinda Chaddha
