Mystery Career #1: Who Am I? Can You Guess My Job?

I've been called many things: A birdwatcher, a cobbler, a ghoul. I've also been called a honey pot and a pavement artist. Can you guess my profession?

Still can't guess? These are some of the types of work I perform each day: dry cleaning, pack hunting, jarking, traffic analysis, "wilderness of mirrors" operations.

These are tools of my trade that I depend on to get my job done: Dead-drops, music boxes, pocket litter, Roscoes, stingballs.

If you still can't guess what I do for a living, perhaps the names of some of my famous, dearly departed colleagues will help: Julia Child, Virginia Hall, and Marlene Dietrich. Surely, one more name will pin it down for you: Mata Hari.

If you guessed that I am a spy, you are absolutely right! After all, I grew up watching The Avengers and Get Smart. TV shows like these glamorized the life of a spy! It was only natural that I enrolled in Spy School and became one! Consider how different the world would be if there were no spies. Today, almost every nation in the world has one or more covert organizations of one sort or the other. Yes, spies have job security in this down economy. Uh, good spies, that is! It is an incredibly dangerous job and I need not tell you the often lethal consequences of being found out.

If the jargon I used kept you guessing a bit, the definitions follow below:

1. birdwatcher: a spy
2. cobbler: a spy who makes fake ids
3. ghoul: a spy who visits graveyards to retrieve names for undercover agents
4. honey pot: a female spy
5. pavement artist: an operative on foot
6. dry cleaning: counter surveillance operations against pavement artists
7. hunting pack: a surveillance team
8. jarking: the act of sabotaging a weapons arsenal, rendering the weapons inoperable
9. traffic analysis: gaining information from analysis of radio transmissions
10. wilderness of mirrors: a surveillance operation that is so tricky, it is hard for operatives to distinguish truth from lies
11. dead-drop: a stationary object or place where information is left to be picked up by other operatives
12. music box: a radio
13. pocket litter: the articles in a spy's pocket or purse that affirm his or her cover
14. Roscoe: a handgun
15. stingball: a type of grenade

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Source: Intelligencesearch.com/spycodes.