With the revelation yesterday that a 12th unidentified mole has been arrested, I must conclude that that our fair country is bursting at the seams with sexy sleeper agents. They have penetrated us deep, so to speak. As a fairly qualified amateur spy I feel it is my duty to pass on several telling questions I’ve long used to deduce the affiliations of the shady characters living on my block. Does your neighbor speak with a funny accent? It's been fairly well documented that all of the spies had some type of accent going. Not wanting to implicate Mother Russia most of the agents claimed to come from somewhere else. If your neighbor talks funny they might be a spy.
Are they Belgian? Claiming to come from Belgium is straight from the spy play book, Dr. Evil's child hood background is a prime example. Look at the facts people, Belgium is teeny, you've got to bust out the bifocals to find it on the map and the entire country has a comparable population to the city of Seoul. There just can't be that many Belgians running loose in the world, they can't afford to loose the citizens. Every time one of them goes out of town the national economy threatens to collapse.
Do they claim to be from Canada? This may or may not indicate your neighbor is a spy. We see a lot of Canadians moving south these days for our great medical benefits and to dodge the draft. One of the spies, Ann Foley said she was from Quebec but also claimed Bryan Adams was the Prime Minister of Canada, spy and a smart ass. (Ok, she didn't actually say that, but nobody knows who the Prime Minister is, not even Canadians, anyone with a quick answer has memorized it from a brief).
Do they have an ironic sense of humor? This may be my favorite bit about these folks, they were funny. Anna Chapman put down her address as 99 Fake St. when purchasing her pre-paid cell phone, and one couple reffered to their house Moscow Center. And cutie patootie, Mikhail Semenko took mockery to new heights, with pictures of himself in front of the Capitol, sporting an old school CCCP Soviet t-shirt on his Facebook page, and posted some hilarious English translations on his otherwise snooze inducing blog about the Economy of China.
Are they hot? If your neighbors are hot, they are probably Russian spies, especially if they have a blog about the Superiority of Chinese Economic Policy over the Western Dog Capitalist Greed Mongers, or if they work in real estate.
Does your neighbor ask you lots of personal questions, or about sensitive things at your work? Despite their being planted in the US, it seems like these folks didn't do much in the way of spying. If you're getting peppered with questions, your neighbor is just an annoying busy body and you may eventually need a restraining order.
Do they own a Bill Clinton mask? Again, I've got to differ to Semenko. Any respectable spy has a least one comic mask of a former president in their disguise kit, it is absolutely what one should be wearing when posing with a friend in drag. I happen to have a Nixon mask, finding it more classic but then I'm from an older generation.
Are your neighbors accomplished gardeners? At this point even mentioning "hydrangeas" will get you on a red eye flight to spy swap central. If your neighbors have a green thumb and are hot, they are spies.
Do they steal your fruit? OK, I know this sounds random, but a number of years ago I worked as a breakfast cook for the US Army at a base in Garmisch Partenkierchen in Bavaria. Doubtless, many of you know Garmisch is a hot bed of spy activities. My colleagues and I made buffet meals for men we were asked to refer to as “college students”. In actuality our patrons were commanding officers in Latvian, Lithuanian and Romanian Armies being debriefed by the US military in policy practices in the hopes that their countries would soon be accepted into the NATO defensive block. It was assumed by many of us that these “college students” were also spies. We liked them well enough, they didn’t complain about the food or ogle the waitresses. They did, however, pocket the fruit from the buffet table. We never figured out exactly what was up with that, they could have a snack whenever they wanted to. So why purloin the apples? I figured it’s in their nature, the compulsive need to sneak something from the table in a hidden pocket. My warning, beware the fruit stealers.
When speaking, do they use strange colloquialisms? If the odd “comrade” or a casual “dasvidania” gets dropped into conversation your neighbors are not spies they are showing off. If they start talking real estate, they are trying to protect their cover and of course are spies, special note should be made of “investment opportunities in a lakeside dacha”
Are they on Facebook? If your neighbors are hot, garden and use Facebook, they are spies.
Do they craft? I have yet to see any evidence of the spies crafting, this is their downfall, please refer to previous article where I discuss this at length.
Does your neighbor ask to borrow strange things from you? Requests for milk or lemon juice should be considered suspect, they are making invisible ink. If they are asking for masking tape they are leaving contact messages on the windows, if they are trying to bum a cup of vodka they are alcoholics.
So once you’ve scrutinized your neighbors closely and figured out they are in fact moles, what should you do with this information? There’s probably a book deal in it for you, so take lots of notes and if your neighbor is hot you might consider sleeping with them (this will help them feel confident in their cover story) ditto if they are real estate agents, no idea what the housing market is going to do these days and on the chance they aren’t spies, you’ve totally hedged your bets.