A Puzzle Wrapped In An Enigma...

The Tuesday Knights were back in the spying game this week with the resumption of Pete's Top Secret SI campaign.

After our rather uneventful first stab at Operation; Fastpass, things picked up this week as we got down to serious planning.

We were in a hotel in Budapest, Hungary, mostly posing as conventioneers at an international puzzle convention, where we were supposed to make contact with puzzle maven Andre Lerekhov - the conventions guest of honour - and assist him to defect to Orion (our employers).

As it turned out not only was Lerekhov present, but he - or his handlers - were also using a body double to stand in for him between his keynote speeches.

Simon was back with us this week, boosting our numbers with his heavy weapons expert Big M, who joined Hermione (Clare's character) and Bruno (Kevin's character) as part of my "staff" (I was posing as head of British puzzle company).

We brainstormed some pretty wild ideas - the most far-out being Clare's suggestion which involved us obtaining the corpse of a dead dolphin (probably best you don't know) - but it was Meredith, playing the role of "rich socialite" Rose Thorne, who came up with the winner: host a yacht party on the last day of the convention and use that as a cover to neutralise Lerekhov's handlers and smuggle him away.

Bruno was already operating outside the hotel - as he'd tangled with one of the enemy goons at the end of our first session and could be identified - and so he arranged, with the use of Orion cash, the hire of the yacht (and a number of a back-up escape routes as well), leaving Rose to use her contacts to sort out caterers etc for the event.

While this was going on, the rest of us were keeping an eye on Lerekhov (or was it his double?). We managed to deduce that his stand-in was a smoker - which Lerekhov was not - and had a nicotine-stained finger (as well as wearing contact lenses to match Lerekhov's eye colour).

The session ended with the close of business on the second day of the conference, so we should be able to wrap things up next month with the bulk of that session being devoted to the yacht party and Lerekhov's defection.

Pete predicted - I imagine quite confidently - that there would "gunplay" next time!