A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…
What an inane counterphrase. I hate it when countersigns and passwords are this stupid.
But I always need a counterphrase, ‘cause you see, I’m a SAM. A Secret Agent Man. Yeah, there are SAW’s for the ladies, and SAP’s for the bloody feminists; we don’t care, though. They just stole the name from some tune my pal Charley was thumpin’ to one day.
This particular counterphrase is supposedly taken from some famous movie from the late twentieth century. I have the first line of the prologue, my contact has the last line. How creative my superiors can be. I’ve got a job to do when I get the correct countersign, for Herr Slobbo (my pet name for my boss—he’s a real german porker); yes, a very special job.
I memorize the two lines, and shove the evidence in my mouth. DAMMIT! Sardine flavored. I hate it when they’re sardine flavored. Yeah, some whiz-bag in the labs figured us field agents would be more apt to eat the evidence if the paper it was printed on had a little flavor to it. He was right-on about the idea, but very wrong about some of the flavors. Sardines, for Chrissakes!
My contact is in Los Angeles, the City of Angels. Yeah, there are angels in that town: the Angels of Smog. My eyes practically bleed when I walk around that town. So I stop off at the infirmary and get some maximum strength eye-drops and a set of nose-plugs. Next I stop at the armory for my equipment: first to pick up the standard artillery (Uzi, grenades, flame thrower, etc.) for daily highway travel in L.A., then to pick up any special devices for the trip. We spies have the neatest lookin’ equipment, and when it actually works, well, it’s even better!
I stop by Travel, and have the rotten luck of gettin’ an "express" flight out of town. "Express" in this day and age has come to mean "Sit-with-your-thumb-up-your-ass-on-the-tarmac-until-the-regular-flights-take-off." And that means it’ll take twice the time it’d take to fly on one of those regular flights that got off the ground before we did. Idiot airlines; I hate it when they do that.
By the time the plane finally lands at L.A.X. and I get a rental car that actually starts, it’s nearing dawn. I’ve gotta get some sleep before the meet, and I figure the best time is now; I’ve gotta be on top of things for this particular job. I put in some eye-drops and haul out my highway equipment before I get to the on-ramp for the freeway. Dodging potholes from last night’s rush-hour assaults and melées is second nature to a man of my particular skills, and I blow the daylights out of some early-riser that cuts in front of me. Five lanes of traffic—all empty—and this idiot tries to cut me off; that’s not justifiable homicide, that’s idiotcide.
After a near miss with a cop that ended up blowing a Dairy Queen to hell (okay, maybe I was speeding, but that’s no reason to try to fire a rocket up my tailpipe. Innocent bystanders can get hurt if you miss.). I arrive at my hotel; nothing but the best for us field agents, that’s for sure. The sign in the window quotes the prices, "$20 per night, $10 per hour (20 minute minimum)." Most of the places around town are seedy joints like the Hyatt Regency or Embassy Suites, which have only one-hour minimums. I pay for the day, dropping an extra twenty for the manager so I won’t be remembered, and head upstairs. I set alarms at the door and windows after clearing the bugs out of the room. Damn those cockroaches; they say that those pesky buggers will be the only intelligent life to survive a nuclear war. I hate when they say that.
When satisfied with the various security precautions, I grab my teddy-bear and climb into bed for my little snooze.
When the first alarm rings, I’m up in a jerk. My cat-like reflexes aid me when I blast the offending party with the thirty-eight I’ve got hidden in the teddy-bear. Damn my reflexes; now Ted has a black stump where his head used to be, and my only good clock is scattered all over the room. I decide I’ve had enough sleep and turn off the door and window alarms without violence; then I put a pot of java on to perk while I shower off travel dirt and the remains of Ted. The bathtub vibrates happily after I step in and my weight turns on the water (Man, this is a high class place; at the Hyatt, only the beds vibrate, and they cost money to do just that!).
Stepping out into the refreshing evening air…
(WAIT, stop— HOLDIT!!!
This Is Los Angeles, not CLEVELAND!!!)
Stepping out into the dismal abyss of the evening smog…
(MUCH BETTER )
I take a not-too-deep breath and remember—painfully—that I forgot my nose-plugs after my shower. I run back inside, vomit twice, and get the plugs in before it’s my brains I see floating in the stool instead of my lunch. Some eye-drops and another sandwich at McSlimey’s (No, I will not call it McDonald’s—have you ever had a BigMac cooked in L.A.??? What an EXPERIENCE!) and I’m refreshed.
The drive to my meet is without incident (No, two explosions and a high-speed car chase are run-of-the-mill here. Haven’t you ever seen CHiPs?). I quietly enter the bar where I’m to meet my contact; hell, I could be screaming for all it mattered—the music was so loud my head was spinning. I ordered a drink at the bar by writing DOUBLE MARTINI, two olives down on a bar napkin (the bartender was stone-deaf, and by his eyes, was stoned as well). After getting my drink, I found a seat in a booth. After carefully sitting with my back to the wall, I drained my drink in a gulp for internal relief, and shoved the olives in my ears for external relief. Sure it’s sick, but I was desperate, and desperate men do desperate deeds (UGH, what a cliché).
A well dressed man comes over and sits across from me at my booth. All the tears in his jeans were worn in the right places, and with impeccable fashion sense, the bandanna around his throat doesn’t quite hide the rope-burn scars from a near-hanging. Bloody psychopaths are what they are. The damn things are as popular as the power-ties worn by yuppies in the 1980’s.
I write the first half of the countersign on a napkin, assuming he can read. Fortunately he can and speaks, and even though I still can’t hear, I read his lips (Of course I can read lips, I’m a Secret Agent Man.). I understood what he said; it was the countersign. I love when that happens.
Then I shot him.
Not a single soul looked, or even knew what had happened. He merely slumped over as if he had one too many (and probably did anyway). I shook my head as if in disgust, and sauntered out of the bar. Walking to my car with the same plod of the other street denizens, I coaxed the olives out of my ears and pegged a passing police car with both, one right handed, the other with my left. I drove directly to the airport and took the next regular flight back home. You see, I completed my mission.
This kid I offed was an eyesore to the agency. He was a snitch, useful at one time, but lately he’d been giving us bad information. Our agents had walked into a couple of traps, and this guy could identify many of our people that needed to remain anonymous. So I was brought in. Most large organizations have a company killer that is in charge of firing people, or inform them that they’ve been laid off. I fire AT them, and don’t need to tell them when they’re laid off. Because it’s a coffin that they’re laid in.
I arrive at my pad around dawn, and sit around watching a talk show while I eat my favorite breakfast: beer on Cheerios. Some old bag is on the TV yelling at Gerry Rivers that he’s a "homo and a communist sympathizer." Way to go, Grandma! Gerry says that it’s a free country, and that he can be whatever he wants to be. And he’s right. I wanted to be a spy, and I am one. A Secret Agent Man.
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