Junkets

Summer 2013 Gladys Goode, spy, comes from retirement to undertake a mission to enhance intelligence opportunities. 

Wearing face and body prostheses, Gladys portrays Nance Preus, high school biology teacher from Kansas; she travels through China for 23 days with a tour group, writing 500 postcards, sending carefully composed notes and giving away clothes with the high school logo. The texts will add onto previously downloaded material entered into storage and networks by the Chinese themselves, and thereafter supposes Gladys, the Americans will eavesdrop without detection.

The trip - sights to see, interactions within the group and vigilant, alarmed Chinese Security - plays out the grand excision, day to day grind, place to place, this site or that museum, using fellow travelers as props and diversions and watching Security guys become more overt and anxious. They must learn what Gladys is doing before she leaves China. Completing much of the assignment as the Chinese close, she uses low-tech methods to evade them and flee.