False Chambers
IT support in San Francisco had never been more thrilling for Mark, but he truly found himself at the precipice of a mystery. The secret door mark found at the bar where Drake Bannon had disappeared led to nowhere. It was just an empty chamber. And that’s when Mark realized it must just have been a sort of resting place.
Indeed, there was a cot on one end, and he found a flat-screen TV in a corner of the room. It was a place to crash while the bar cleared out so someone being tailed by another agent could wait out his pursuers. It had worked— Mark had left and not returned until the following day. Bannon must have exited the premises in the morning, after Mark had quit monitoring the cameras.
But this gave him an idea. If Bannon had hidden in a chamber to dissuade those who would follow him, it was just as likely that other bars had other access to passageways, and that is why Mark had lost him so regularly.
Authoritative Infiltration
Mark retraced his steps and found one of the other clubs where he had lost Bannon. As at the previous location, he deigned to be technical support, beating on one of the doors an hour before the club opened. “Hey, I’m with OneClick Solutions Group, we provide IT support in San Francisco,” he said when someone finally answered.
“I didn’t know the IT guy was coming by today—”
“Yep! We provide:
- Flat-Fee Services
- VoIP Solutions
- Cloud and Hosted Services
…and much more. Not that VoIP would be much help to an establishment with as little phone use as this one—”
“Okay. Just don’t make a mess, alright? And let me know if you’re going to do anything with the power.”
“Absolutely— I’ll be gone before you know it,” Mark smiled. That had gone easier than he’d thought. He’d put an hour into a backstory and research expecting resistance. But with IT, folks sometimes just assumed you were supposed to be there— unless it was a high-powered corporate environment, of course.
Passageway
On entry, Mark went straight to the bathroom, the most likely place where there would be a secret passageway. He found nothing— nothing except a toilet with tape and an out of order sign. It stank to high heaven. Mark searched the room thoroughly, went in and out of all the stalls, checked the walls— the out of order toilet was the only one where something could be hidden. But maybe it was the perfect cover!
Mark took a breath and ducked under the tape. He tapped on the tiles, checked under the tank at the back, and actually ended up stumbling backwards through the tape when he ran out of air and had to inhale, accidentally ingesting the smell. It was like ten sick cats puked in a sour kraut factory. Mark expurgated in a nearby trashcan, then, in acrimony wiped his nose, purposefully walked to the toilet, and said: “Out of order my foot, you’re getting flushed!”
As soon as he pressed a lever, the toilet made a sucking noise, then backed into the wall with a grinding sound that revealed a secret passage. In all his years, Mark had never had a more exciting time providing IT support in San Francisco.