TOM FRANCIS
REGRETS THIS ALREADY

Avoiding Suspicion At The US Embassy

I had to visit the US Embassy in London today, to renew the Visa I need to go on press trips. They won’t let you take any electronics in there, and they won’t hold them for you either – not without ‘severe delays’ and a chance they’ll cancel your appointment, which costs $121.

So when I was heading out before dawn this morning, I put down my phone, picked up my MP3 player and left. Then I realised I was forgetting my phone and grabbed my phone, then I realised I couldn’t take my MP3 player and put back my MP3 player, then I realised I couldn’t take my phone and put back my phone, then my phone rang and I picked up my phone, put it down, picked it up, hung up, put it down and left.

I shut the door, locked the door, then armed my alarm with the electronic remote control that looks like nothing so much as a detonator.

I disarmed the alarm, unlocked the door, opened the door, armed the alarm, threw the remote indoors, shut the door, locked the door and left.

This was to be the beginning.

At the station, rummaging through my bag to make sure I had the nine bits of paper I’d need, I found the USB stick I keep in there. It’s a decent-sized one, and probably contains some personal stuff, so I wasn’t immediately sure what do to with it. I had ten minutes, and the office is five minutes from the station, so I decided I’d drop it off at work.

Five minutes later, I found the office wasn’t open yet.

I wasn’t ready to throw this thing away, but it wasn’t life-changingly vital. I thought for a second, then put it in the flowerbed outside the Future offices. Then, realising it looked like rain, grabbed a nearby paper cup to give it some shelter.

It was great. It was like a dead drop, but for myself, of incriminating evidence, only not incriminating or evidence, and with a paper cup hat. Real Spycatcher stuff.

I made my train, sat down and relaxed: electronics-free and above suspicion. It was around then that I started to look at the non-electronic items I had with me through US Embassy eyes. Amongst them:

• A home-burnt DVD labelled ‘Assassins’.
• A notepad containing detailed ideas for experimental nuclear payload delivery systems.
• A satellite image of the US Embassy.
• A stick-on Hitler moustache.

These were for a game review, a Supreme Commander blog post, navigation and from a Richard Herring gig last week, but I worried this might not be obvious. Still, I couldn’t really ditch them: I wanted everything except the satellite image, and there were no bins anywhere near the station or embassy for security reasons.

When I finally got in, this was my interview:

“Who do you work for?”
“Future Publishing.”
“Any particular magazine?”
“PC Gamer.”
“And how long have you worked there?”
“Just over five years.”
“Your application has been approved.”

Edit: Oh yeah, Epilogue! When I got back to the office that afternoon, I thought I’d just discreetly scoop up the USB stick on my way in. But I happened to arrive back at the start of lunch, so the lobby was swarming and there was a guy actually sitting on the flowerbed wall directly in front of where I’d stashed it.

For a moment I entertained the notion that he might have just stolen it, and was now scoping out the area to look for spies who might have been after this obviously sensitive dead drop. But either way, I couldn’t think of any sane way to explain why I needed to reach past him and overturn the paper cup in the mud behind. I just walked past, played a bit of StarCraft 2, then slipped out later to recover it.

It was safe and dry. Fine work, agent paper cup hat!