I’ve been lucky enough to be invited to many product briefings in my time writing WGS , but none as mysterious as the event I attended today. Little did I know it would see me serving Queen and Country, spying and spooking around the streets of London. Here’s my story.
London, England. Tuesday 25th October 2011 12:40 hrs.
A short email arrives in my inbox courtesy of the WGS contact form. Now, aside from reader requests and queries, I get a lot of email from scammers, spammers, “SEO Consultants” (love those guys) and the like, so most end up in the trashcan. This one, however, caught my interest (blurring is mine). It read:
Rushing between meetings, I was all set to hit delete. But as my finger hovered over the trash icon, something intrigued me, so what the heck. I dropped a note back with my email address and got on with the day.
Wednesday 26th October 2011 14:26 hrs.
In truth, I’d forgotten all about the request, but a second email arrived the following afternoon. This time with attachments:
Should I go? On the one hand, it meant a trek into London on a Saturday I’d marked out for a touch of Batman on the old Xbox 360. On the other, I was needed elsewhere, and these guys had clearly recognised my spy-tastic potential. Gotham City or London Town? Cape, or indeed Country? Ah, the dilemna! After much soul searching, I agreed to attend the briefing in London – so at the weekend, it was off to the capital to do my duty.
Saturday 29th October 2011 10:50am
As requested, I arrived at Microsoft’s impressive UK HQ in the Victoria area of London, taking a circuitous route around the nation’s capital to ensure I wasn’t being followed.
They were expecting me. No arch-villain with a white cat, unfortunately but I was led through to a holding area, awaiting the mission briefing. Alongside me, seven other agents – bloggers from the worlds of fashion, art, design and music. I was there representing tech. We swapped names and stories, talked about our respective communities, Spotify, the Cloud… the usual chat but throughout we were each wondering the same thing. Just who could we trust?
A door opened, we were invited into the briefing room – a comfortable lounge adorned with Microsoft kit. Xbox 360s, Kinects, notebooks, desktops – a giant flatscreen monitor on the wall, sofas, a dining room table and chairs. Two intelligence analysts and a man introduced only as… “The Director”. Before the briefing started, two security guards with handheld scanners entered the room. Each of us frisked. I glanced across at a fellow agent, Will. He owned a music blog, promoting unsigned artists, or so he said. Californian. Confident… a little too chatty, maybe, but hey we were all nervous. One guard ran the scanner over Will’s torso – big alarms. The rest of us stood agog as the guard pulled open Will’s shirt…. he was wired up. One of the agents checked the URL Will had talked up. 404 – the guy was a ringer. A leftie? A rightie? A Wrong-un. Protesting, screaming, he was dragged out by the guards, never to be seen again. This was no ordinary briefing.
The Director kicked off the meeting. Each of us was handed a silver aluminium attaché case, a laptop bag and an envelope.
Inside the envelope, a combination code for the attaché case. Slowly, I snapped open the locks. Inside, personalised dog tags with a Hotmail address and password. Two blurry photos. A briefing document. No body parts – that was a good thing. On to the laptop case. Inside, a sparkling new Samsung Series 9 Ultrabook
The mission? It was all in the briefing document. Head to one of three secure locations. Open PC, dongle up, head to Hotmail. Log-in. Hit up the integrated Windows Live Messenger, ping one of the Analysts at HQ. “THE LION IS IN THE DEN”. Await instructions. Nice and easy.
I glanced at the list of locations, points sketched on a map. We’d been warned that enemy agents were at large – to be always vigilant. A nearby coffee shop looked like the best option. Power points, coffee, people. Easy to blend in. I grabbed the kit and walked.
