When she got back to her desk at her home-office with her freshly-brewed cup of tea, Sarah already had a new IM waiting for her, from an agent she had codenamed ANMERCATOR. He (or she, she didn't know) was asking for the standard rate in return for "urgnt nfo of interest to ur firm".
        That was the way it was; everyone always had “urgent nfo” to sell in Mumbai. She approved the transaction, and her computer automatically sent the payment from one of her front accounts to ANMERCATOR's offshore. A moment later, a document appeared on her rightmost screen - and she rolled her eyes before finishing the first sentence. It had the look and feel of intel spam, probably sold to every spook shop in town, and claimed that "with 100% reliability", the Indian Air Force was experiencing a cash crunch, and would be spending less than usual today.
        Sarah was almost certain that this wasn't true. She had a report from Joss, her junior partner who had the graveyard shift, that India's overnight negotiations with Brazil had gone better than expected, and that the IAF was particularly flush right now. Joss expected they'd be spending it on R&D, and Sarah tended to agree with him.
        Oh well; at least now she knew for sure that ANMERCATOR was Indian counter-intelligence. Having a few double-agents on the payroll was always a good thing, even back in the old days.

        Sarah had been a spy for a long time now. She had started way back in the old days with the CIA's Clandestine Service, before Web 4.0, still meeting agents in crowded cafés or dark alleys in foreign capitals. She had stayed on longer than most, up until the CIA decided to wash its hands of the spy business and just outsource it all. Now she ran her own company- SCW Security - which subcontracted for aerospace intelligence from Argonne Systems, which had the CIA's South Asia contract.

        She spent an hour or so setting up front companies for the day. A few too-good-to-be-true engineering firms, on the off-chance that an IAF allocations officer would get sloppy and offer one of them a contract directly; but she put most of her efforts into a few specialty companies, selling boutique software or rare antique gadgets. Some aerospace engineers were going to be getting very rich over the next few hours, and those government advances would be burning a hole in their pockets.
        No sooner had she finished than she had her first nibble - though not, she was surprised, from one of her new fronts, but rather a software company she had set up a few days before, as part of a sting against some Russian nanoware-launderers, and had completely forgotten about since.
        "want 2 hire u," the message to the front company read, from a 20-something electronic engineer in Hyderabad.
        "wat 4?" Sarah sent back.
        "in ovr my head; plz help," the engineer replied. Sarah didn't respond, waiting to draw out some more information. "optimizin filter on radar systm. gvnt contract," she finally heard back.
        "ok" Sarah accepted, and activated her negotiation software. So did the engineer, and a price flashed on the screen. "ok" sent Sarah again.

        She smiled contentedly as she looked over the information her unwitting new source had sent over; it was a respectably-advanced radar system, and looked designed for the next generation of micro-UCAVs. Not surprising, she thought; they just sold their current state-of-the-art to Brazil, so now they need something new to keep their edge. She started bundling up the data to send upstairs to Argonne - they always had a few companies on retainer that could do this sort of thing: run the optimizations she had promised, maybe introduce a hidden flaw, and send it back. Ideally, the Indians wouldn't even know that it had even been subcontracted.
        She was stopped by an urgent beeping. That morning, an enterprising kid had found a place to point a parabolic thermometer at the regional Intelligence Bureau SIGINT mainframe, and sold the data to her and some of the other spook shops. In a few hours the IB would catch on and shut him down, but in the meantime Sarah could use the heat differential from the mainframe along with her NSA feed to estimate whether any extra attention was being payed to her - and right now, it was.
        Maderchod, she thought, it's too early in the day to get into a pissing contest with the locals. Her fingers hesitated over the Big Red Button, the emergency disconnect switch. Too drastic, she decided. Still, she initiated an incremental shutdown, letting the computer slowly disconnect most of the processes, dialing down the bandwidth usage until her system looked nice and inconspicuous.

        She looked at the heat differential again - it looked like she had managed to hide; still, better to hang back, make sure her cover wasn't blown. She spent the downtime making herself another cup of tea and order a tiffin delivery for lunch, and then, settling back at her workstation, set about making up the valuable half-hour she had lost.
        Her poor Hyderabad radar engineer had sent her several frantic messages already; but that contact was what had got her the extra attention, so better not to reply now. One of her new engineering companies had actually been offered a job - but the employers hadn't heard back within 60 seconds, so they had gone elsewhere.
        Taking a new track, Sarah searched the local blogosphere, and found a young man who was angry because his boyfriend - this time an airfoil designer - had canceled a date to work on a sudden new contract. She pitched him, and he agreed to let her listen in as he tried to get the boyfriend to tell him what the contract was. It was moderately successful - she didn't get any technical details, but did manage to confirm that the Indians were developing a new micro-UCAV. It would probably be ready by tomorrow morning - tonight even, if they were lucky. It would give India an edge over China in the Pacific for at least the next week, unless they decided to cash in and sell it first.
        Another beep - they had finally noticed the boy with his parabolic thermometer and shut him down.

        By mid-afternoon, the specialty companies she had set up were paying off. A half-dozen or so aerospace and electronics engineers suddenly had money to spend, and they all seemed to want to buy antique gadgets, iPods and even the gigantic old XBox 420 game consoles. Most of them hadn't even been born when those were originally sold -  but old electronics were all the rage these last few days. Sarah chatted with all of them, forwarding them all the jokes and rumors which wouldn't be getting huge for at least another few hours - make them feel ahead of the curve. One seemed chatty, and another vulnerable, and she focused her attention on them, flattering them into telling her a little of what they had worked on, and then pressuring them into accepting money in return for all of the details.
        She only stopped when she got a message from one of her long-term agents, who she hadn't talked to yet today. She spent a few minutes caressing her ego, assuring the agent that she was valuable even though she didn't have anything to sell right now, and listening to her complain about her dirty father-in-law. She loathed to hurt her feelings by cutting her off or ignoring her, but she hated the time spent away from the UCAV case. A few more details, Sarah was sure, and she'd get a product bonus.

        It was early evening when her PDA buzzed - not an incoming message, but the audio line, meant for emergencies only. It was Phillipe, her contact at Argonne.
        "Sarah, hon, they're onto you," he said.
        "Who are?" She asked.
        "The Intelligence Bureau," he said. "They're under pressure from the Moroccans to stop us from stealing some new project they're working on. You're on that, right?"
        "It's a new micro-UCAV, yeah," said Sarah.
        "Good. Listen, they're probably coming for you now," he said. "Send us what you've got, then wipe your systems. I talked to the FBI, they know about some Indian agents in the States. They can round them up now, and have a trade set up by the time they get you back to the police station, don't worry."
        Sarah hesitated. "No, it's alright," she said. "I can handle this."
        "What do you mean?"
        "Tell the FBI not to bother arresting the agents," she said. "I'll be okay."
        "You sure?" Phillipe started saying as she hung up.

        Sarah took a deep breath, and hit the Big Red Button. Her workstation whirred in protest for a moment, and then went silent. She reached in, and tugged out the memory stick with all her essential product on it. Then, slipping it into her pocket, she opened the front door and walked down the stairs.
        The street outside was full, of old ladies selling food to the crowd of people slipping out of their home-offices to have a quick dinner-breakfast-lunch, of young boys selling specialty software or pirated movies and young girls looking for debugging work, and an unmarked van was driving slowly through the throng, like it was looking at house numbers, or at a signal intercept. Not looking back, Sarah turned and, with the dirty unfiltered air and smells on her face, stepped forward and vanished into the crowd.