Guest Post: Author Sarah Sky takes us into the real world of espionage

Posted on 9 January 2015

In a special guest post, Sarah Sky, author of the Jessica Cole: Model Spy series, tells us just how close to the truth Jessica’s awesome MI6 gadgets are. Turns out, if you can imagine a gadget, it probably already exists…

JESSICA Cole, the teenage model spy, is back – with the world’s most deadly weapon to locate and dangerous adversaries to battle along the way.

She needs lots of cool MI6 gadgets to assist her latest assignment aboard a luxurious superyacht in Monaco – and help get her out alive.

Her stash includes a lipstick with a hidden movement sensor; sunglasses that contain facial recognition technology and carry out criminal records checks; a necklace that allows her to breathe underwater; and an iPod nano which instantly translates different languages.

But what gadgets do spies really use?

I asked a “security expert” friend for advice while researching Code Red Lipstick, my first book in the Jessica Cole: Model Spy series.

Without skipping a beat, he replied: “If you can imagine it, so can MI6 and every other security service. In fact they’re probably already using it.”

In fact, nothing is too implausible in the real world – KGB spies in the Cold War had lipstick pistols, button hole cameras and shoes with heel transmitters among their large espionage arsenal.

During World War Two, the Nazis hatched a plot to assassinate former British Prime Minister, Sir Winston Churchill, using exploding chocolate bars.

In 2006 a British ‘spy rock’ that stored classified data provided by Russian informants was discovered in Moscow – causing a huge diplomatic row between the two countries.

Tiny, insect-sized spy drones are already being developed in the United States, along with a “Cheetah” robot that could outrun the fastest man on Earth. It will be able to sprint, zigzag and be precise enough to stop on a dime.

How about enabling a spy or a soldier to run at Olympic speeds and go for days without food or sleep in the future?

That’s taken care of if new research into gene manipulation is successful in the US. Injured operatives and soldiers could also eventually be able to grow back limbs blown apart by bombs.

The truth is that governments across the world are conducting jaw-dropping research, which sounds like science fiction but could mean the difference between life and death in espionage, as well as wars.

Even the Ministry of Defence’s own think-tank, the Development Concepts and Doctrine Centre, predicts that by 2045, advances in medical technology could create a class of genetically superior humans – similar to characters like Wolverine from X-Men.

It believes that brain implants may be developed that “either augment or enhance vision, language, auditory and memory capabilities”.

With all this in mind, I’ve twice ventured to an annual security conference in London – heavily vetted, never widely advertised and visited by “spooks”.

I’ve experimented with the latest tactical ladders used in hostage situations and the high-tech grapnels used to scale submarines as well as encrypted mobile phones and facial recognition technology, which can spot even the partially obscured face of a target in a crowd.

I’ve been taught how to use the hidden gadgets in high-tech armoured cars to disable or even destroy a vehicle in pursuit. I’d be long gone before a villain in one of my books managed to catch up.

I’ve learnt that surveillance robots and mini-helicopters are a vital tool on covert missions and that electro-magnetic pulses will kill an engine instantly if a target attempts to escape by car or speed boat.

What has my research taught me? That the gadgets Jessica uses, from taser trainers to powder compacts with X-ray vision, can never be too far-fetched or unrealistic.

Fact, as they say, will always be stranger than fiction.

The second book in Sarah Sky’s Jessica Cole: Model Spy series, Fashion Assassin, is out now. Buy your copy today!