Spy School Fundraising. It’s Best to Just Pay Up.

Educational institutions are not immune to the ups and downs of the economy.

Buildings age, equipment wears out, textbooks go out of date, and various dorms, labs, lecture halls, and administrative offices show their years and need to be upgraded.

We can picture a working spy, double agent, political assassin, or perhaps simply a hard-working traitor at the highest levels of government going about the business of the day: breaking and entering; tapping the phones of the offices down the hall; microfilming the secret minutes of a dark society that seeks world domination; flipping through the Amazon pages for just the right poison darts to insert into the neck of a corrupt African dictator via a native blowgun; or, as in this case, something extraordinarily dramatic and pressing…when his cell phone rings.

He answers tersely.

“How did you get this number? It’s supposed to be top secret. Yes, speaking. Yes, yes.”

His brow furrows as he listens and he exhibits all the physical symptoms of advanced alarm: raised eyebrows, a bead of sweat on his upper lip, a tremor in his left earlobe.

“I understand.” He seems to be stalling for time while his mind races. He gives every indication of a man who has been trapped by his past.

The voice on the other end of the line keeps coming at him.

It is young, this voice. it is young and enthusiastic. It is young and enthusiastic and energetic. Most particularly it is relentless. Will it never stop?

Some say it is the chirpiness that is most chilling.

“Agent Cobalt, I’m so glad we caught you before dinner! My name is Molly and I’m one of many dedicated students at your alma mater, The Gemini Institute of Advanced Spycraft, who is dedicating my time to a cause that means so much to me, and I know means so much to you.

Remember Saturday afternoon football games at Microfiche Field? The students holding colorful banners, the stirring choruses from the members of the marching band, the cheerleaders on the sideline, the players on the field? Remember how they were all double- and triple-crossing one another?

I’ll bet you were just the sort of student who did one of those complicated stadium-sized cheers where a bunch of you wore certain colors and stood up and sat down in unison, spelling out the address of the redhead who had incriminating material on the prime minister.“

“Miss, I’m in the middle of one of the worst crises the world has ever…”

“And how about the field trips where you practiced assassination methods on the local livestock? Do you think you will ever have such joyous, carefree times again? Do the memories take you right back?”

The guy couldn’t be more intense in his reply. “You see, this one villain is about to inject the drinking water supply of every major city in the world with a compound to make them obedient to his own monomaniacal commands, and…”

“I just know you were exactly the type of student to take a book — say, Popular Untraceable Poisons, or Using Your Cement Hat as a Neck-Breaking Weapon, A Perspective — down to Henchman Lake right there in the middle of campus, directly under Hoodlum Tower, and stretch out under a tree.

“Miss…”

“Sir, we’re calling because you fit the profile of one of our accomplished – and generous! – alumni that I know wants to see the college make every improvement possible to keep it in the top ranks of spy universities in the country.”

“Miss…”

“We don’t call these simple improvements, sir, we call them absolute necessities in today’s complex world. We need to send our young graduates out into the world prepared!”

“I have absolutely got to go right now, people are waiting on me to save the…”

“I will only take a few more minutes of your time. Have you by chance heard of our Premium Giving Plan? Or our Founder’s Pledge Package? Or our Prestige Elite Program? It is the simplest thing in the world to sign up…”

The words — Premium, Prestige, Elite — land like ultra-miniature GPS-guided devices that quietly but painfully explode upon contact with his skin.

There is a breaking point for any man, it is said, and this fellow is nearly there.

He gasps out desperately. “Let me interrupt you right there. What is the bare minimum that I can pledge to get you off the phone?”

“Well, we don’t like to put it in those terms, for something as important as this…”

“The bare minimum.”

“Oh, in that case, I would say let’s start in the range of $10,000, but maybe round it up with a couple more zeros at the end if we see the need to plant any incriminating evidence on you.”

“I’m not sure that I can…”

“Oh, we have access to your bank account; that hit job you just pulled off in Argentina left you nicely funded for just such a charitable outreach as this.”

“Will you still be running this campaign in a few months? That might be a better time…”

“I say, sir, that in these very halls that you walked, or perhaps skulked, these hallowed halls, students today are having to make do with Groucho Marx mustaches in Disguises 101, and poisons mixed from ingredients in their grandmother’s pantry that wouldn’t stun a rabbit, much less bring down one of today’s better dressed megalomaniacs. They pass out postage stamps that don’t do a thing when you lick them, much less deliver a truth-serum potion to the enemy’s cerebellums. Sir, when they write something down…the ink doesn’t disappear. That is where things stand today. Are you ready to help?” There is a catch in her voice.

“Maybe let me get a few more paychecks under my belt and…”

“Sir, I will track you down to the ends of the earth and deliver a karate chop to your neck that will result in your quick demise. I have the training.”

“Oh, all right. All right.”

“I can hypnotize the people around you to believe you are an invading alien from outer space that they need to capture and carefully dissect…”

“I said, all right.”

Her voice turns sweet. “Shall I put this on your credit card or send a hit man around to your place once a month to stand in your doorway and pound his fist into his hand ominously?”

And so it goes.

Across this great country of ours grown men who have come to wonder if anybody really loves them, only need to pick up the jangling phone and talk to people who really, really do. Love them, I mean. And all it takes is to have gone to school somewhere.