Chapter 6

The Mantel building’s body corporate consisted of a chairperson, secretary, treasurer and two other voting members that where regular attendees. The Kobra team put surveillance on them all, hoping to identify a potential weakness that they could exploit.

The chairman proved to be a regular family guy happily married. He was a respected member of a number of clubs, spent most of his time at work and weekends with his wife and children. While no doubt a great guy he wasn’t of much use to Kobra. They quickly ruled him out and dropped the surveillance.

The secretary turned out to be harder to watch. Not because he was a master of evading his tail or had even caught onto his pursuers. He just didn’t go anywhere much worth following. He wasn’t in a relationship. He lived alone and when he wasn’t working he never seemed to leave his apartment. Kobra kept some rudimentary surveillance going via a hidden camera they placed overlooking the entrance to the secretary’s apartment but crossed him off the list as unlikely to be useful.

The treasurer immediately looked more promising; while initial investigation showed he was married he spent many nights away from home on what appeared to be business. However on a number of occasions they followed him and his secretary leaving the office together and going out to dinner and night clubs. They stalked him and took photographs of some intimate moments that they were sure his wife would not approve of. The Kobra team sent the treasurer a text message and included one of the photos they had taken along with a note. ‘To get more be at café 65 corner of Exhibition and Latrobe tomorrow 8am.’

The next morning a number of the Kobra team members sat in booths in the café waiting for the treasurer to arrive. As they were all watching intently for him to arrive they didn’t pay any attention to a woman who along with others ordered a coffee and took a seat at an empty table. Right on 8am the treasurer arrived and ordered a coffee. The designated Kobra operative started to move in on the treasurer. He approached the treasurer holding his mobile up in front of him and nodded. The treasurer said ‘Hi nice of you to join us. Come and meet my wife.’ He promptly went to the table occupied by the woman who had entered earlier. The Kobra operative was a little confused but too well trained to look at his fellow team members for confirmation. He sat down next to the treasurer and said ‘Thanks for meeting me are you sure you wouldn’t rather meet in private’
‘Not at all my dear friend, I specifically invited my wife here to join us.’ The treasurer and his wife chuckled knowingly to each other.
‘Ahh, if you are sure then.’
‘Actually what you may not know when you took those photographs is that my wife and I are happily in an open relationship.’
The treasurer’s wife smiled and turned to the Kobra operative ‘I’d love to see some more photos if you have them. Otherwise are you free this evening? Perhaps the three of us could find somewhere more, um, private?’
The Kobra agent now was flabbergasted he turned a bright red and said ‘I, um, don’t know. Perhaps I better be going’
‘Oh don’t leave we’re only just getting to know each other’ the treasurer and his wife laughed.
The Kobra man got up and with a perplexed look on his face left the café.

Once back at Kobra headquarters the agents debriefed and went over the case file. ‘Damn, let’s step up the surveillance on the other members’
‘We haven’t be able to get anything useful on any of the members of the committee’
‘What about that boring secretary, find out what is he doing in his apartment all day?’

The Kobra team reviewed the video footage from the hidden camera at the secretary’s house. The motion sensing camera had only recorded several minutes of footage over the last few days. It showed the secretary coming and going for work and little else other than some regular fast food deliveries.
It was time to ramp up the electronic surveillance. One of the Kobra team’s Renault vans pulled up a block from the secretary’s apartment. Inside several agents sat at laptops. Each agent peered intently at the video feed from a drone aircraft circling above them. Once they identified the secretary’s apartment the drone flew towards an adjacent high rise building. Just before hitting the building it banked violently and ejected a small electronics bundle. The bundle flew towards the building and stuck to the fascia. The operative controlling the drone smiled enthusiastically and turned from the screen to his colleagues ‘I’ve got the need, the need for speed.’ Another agent tapping at his laptop reported ‘Device is up and running. The process was repeated a couple more time on other buildings. ‘I’m bugging out boys, getting low on gas!’ and the drone pilot flew towards a park and landed the drone neatly in front of the waiting agents.

The devices deployed to the buildings performed two functions. Firstly they began picking up and hacking all the Wi-Fi signals in the general area. Secondly the devices acted as phantom mobile phone towers. All mobile phones in the area believed these new towers were closest. The devices allowed users to make calls like normal but all voice and data traffic was recorded and analysed in the van.

‘He’s making a call.’ The agents in the van listened in while the secretary ordered a pizza from a local shop. ‘The Wi-Fi scan has picked up his router. We’re in; he’s on some internet gambling sites. His logs show he has been on these two sites continuously for days.’
The agents leered at each other ‘We’ve got him now.’ For the investigation showed that the secretary was slowly sinking into a financial hole that he couldn’t get out of.

Over the next few days Kobra approached the secretary posing as go-between for the air conditioner company. They made it clear they didn’t want any bad press. Assuming the finding of the committee was favourable a large contractor’s fee would be paid. After all they told him the secretary would be representing the best interests of the building and the air conditioning company.

NEXT 

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