Monte agrees to introduce me to a couple of the women on his staff. Yes, we can even photograph them if necessary. But profile only. And the interviews have to be done separately because although the girls may have spoken on the telephone most of them have never met. If two of them are working on the same job it's been found far more effective if one doesn't know about the other. I also must use only their operative name - the name they use for work. Monte says he'll introduce me to Pat and to..."hell, I can't remember the name she's using...hey Ron, what's what's-her-name's work name...never mind, I'll think of it before Saturday."

The name is Samantha and she arrives for the interview on Saturday afternoon at a Double Bay coffee lounge. With Frank Monte. He sits in on the interview ostensibly giving her a free hand but presumably making very sure that she doesn't say the wrong thing. She doesn't.

Samantha is 27 and attractive in a Hollywood starlet way. Auburn hair that is long and thick and a beautiful figure. She is poised, quick-witted and, Monte says, one of the top girls at intelligence work. It took him seven months to get her to work for him, although Samantha remembers it as only a couple of months. She was working as a legal secretary and Frank, who was doing some work for the barrister, met her on his visits to the office. She has been working for him for about 15 months.
WHEN WE met she had just finished a job for a company where the chairman suspected the general manager was up to something that would ultimately damage the company. Samantha was hired as a secretary for three weeks and the information she had fed back to the chairman was sufficient to show that his suspicions had, in fact, been right.

Samantha's cover jobs have nearly all been secretarial, although for a short time she worked at a Sydney nightclub as a waitress assigned to watching people operating the till. Although she didn't know at the time Pat, whom I spoke with a few days later, was also on the job watching the club manager. Some pretty big money was involved here. Between them, one of the girls and the manager were pocketing about $40 an hour during the evening's busiest time.

According to Frank "you can make music on those tills" (whether it's in a bar or a store) with several neat tricks - "although you probably shouldn't print them." Then he proceeds to run through a series of simple techniques that are used by people to defraud their employers.

The general feeling seems to be that there is dishonesty everywhere. That it goes on in every company. "Most companies reckon on a certain amount of theft and write off X amount of dollars automatically," Samantha said. "When it exceeds this amount is when we're called in."

The job of the undercover agent is to watch and note everything. Get to know people fast, listen to conversations, without making herself stand out in any way. It usually takes two, three or four weeks, although one long-term job in a clothing manufacturing company where designs and fabrics were being stolen took three months to complete.

To date she hasn't been offered any job she felt morally bound to reject. Monte has trained her well. "I suppose you can think of a way out of any moral question," she said. "Politicians do it every day."

Pat is the most experienced of Frank Monte's female employees. She has been with him for almost five years. "She's divorced with two young kids to support. So I know if I send her away she's not going to have a holiday then come back and file a dud report and resign. Oh yes, it happens." For that reason she has had a couple of assignments out of the country. Most recently she was on a job in Fiji, gathering evidence for the divorce of a television personality.

Contrary to what most people think, divorce still provides a large part of the private investigator's business. "It's still the old game," according to Monte. "The family Law Bill doesn't really work in the utopian way it was intended. It's all right if you are an 18-year-old married to another 18-year-old with no kids and no property. You just wait a year and get divorced. But the conduct of the marriage partner still has a bearing on property settlements and custody of children and consequently we still do a lot of surveillance work of this kind."

Pat is attractive, not overtly pretty like Samantha, but carefully groomed and very much in control of each and every situation. Monte obviously values her work because she is one of only two girls who are on a weekly retainer of $250. On top of this she gets paid for any assignments and, like all the girls, is able to keep any wages she might earn while employed in a cover job.

Pat has done just about every type of job from surveillance and shoplifting assignments to bodyguard work. She is one of the girls licensed to carry a gun and because of this doe more bodyguard work than others.

"I accept the risks of the job," she said. "There are risks in everyday living. But I don't push anything to the limit. I'm never stupid on jobs. If they get dangerous, that's when I get out. It's not worth getting killed."
BOTH SAMANTHA and Pat have reached the stage where they get the best and most rewarding work. The newcomer, however, can expect to spend the early months on surveillance, or perhaps checking out insurance and workers' compensation claims. It's during these months that she'll be able to perfect some of the more blatant yet successful trade tricks. Ploys designed to trap the unsuspecting into seemingly innocent admissions.

One of the most successful of these calls for a young girl, armed with packets of soap powder and official-looking market research sheets, to call on the householder. In return for testing these powders she is told she will receive a whole carton of soap powder in two or three weeks time. (And indeed the carton is delivered as promised. "After all, the client is paying.") Almost always, the young girl is invited inside where she can not only observe but ask questions for "research". She can even carry a tape recorder among the packets of powder if necessary. Monte tells me this story in detail because he is in the process of phasing it out of the routine.

"No, it's not terribly moral but I look at it this way: if the woman or her husband is claiming $200,000 workers' compensation for a back injury and we find the claim is legitimate, then she'll get her money. If she's not, then there are a lot of blind and crippled people out there who could use the money better."

"Sure, it's an invasion of privacy. But somewhere along the line it's got to start. You can't get away with everything. Can you?"