…It was such a secret organisation even Mr Smithies’ wife didn’t know anything about it. As far as Mrs Smithies was concerned, her husband worked at the tax office.
She packed his sandwiches every day and watched him leave for work every morning, waving him off from the kitchen window wearing her bright yellow Marigold gloves. Every evening she set Mr Smithies’ dinner on the table at six o’clock sharp and when they’d eaten they went into the lounge and watched Mrs Smithies’ favourite television programmes. They never talked about his work. Which was just as well as Mr Smithies wasn’t allowed to.
The organisation Mr Smithies worked for had an unusual name: the ‘Black Chamber’. Black Chambers had existed in one form or another for centuries. They’d always been secret organisations created to find out secrets. The very best brains in the country (Mr Smithies was very proud of this part) were specially selected and trained by the British Black Chamber simply to do this job. The problem was there really wasn’t much that was ‘simple’ about it.