The Exphoria Code

by Antony Johnston

  She’d escaped, and driven like a madwoman through the desert night, because there was no sense in both operatives being killed. But the more she thought about the mission’s complete failure, the more she wondered if Giles would disagree with that assessment.

  Out here in the silence of the desert, the jeep’s engine was a cacophony of white noise, drowning out all other sounds. But somewhere in the roar Bridge detected a high-pitched keening, something like…a siren? A motor, spinning up? The sound faltered, broke, and then she recognised her own voice, screaming into the wind. Tears filled her eyes. Whether they were born of the stinging sand grit blown into her face or genuine self-loathing, she neither knew nor cared.

  Until the Russians shot out her windscreen from behind.

  “Over there!” Adrian leaned across her, pointing to a collection of shanty houses and temporary structures up ahead, sheltered behind hills rising to the north.

  Adrian?

  Bridge stared at the empty seat, knew he couldn’t really have been there only a moment before. But she didn’t argue. She turned hard, wrestling with the jeep’s bad joke of a suspension as it threatened to tip over and roll the vehicle. More shots flew past, each with a tiny supersonic crack as it whistled close to her head, but none hit.

  The settlement was abandoned, but now that she was among it, the structures didn’t seem so temporary. Some were made from breezeblock, and several had second floors held up by metal scaffold. Bridge wondered how big the area was, whether she could lose her pursuers in here somewhere. The jeep created an enormous dust cloud behind her as she turned through the settlement’s makeshift streets, and she hoped it would be enough to make the Russians take a wrong turn, or give up the chase.

  As if in answer, bullets slammed into the jeep’s rear. She yanked hard on the wheel to avoid a stone wall rising out of the ground ahead, twin-paddling the brake and accelerator to drift through the corner. The vehicle’s back end clipped the wall, grinding the tailgate in a frenzy of sparks and groaning metal, but then she was out of it, speeding away. Behind her, the Russians took the corner more slowly, avoiding collision but losing ground.

  Perfect.

  “Grenade, now!” she shouted, holding out a hand.

  Then remembered, again, that Adrian wasn’t there. Bridge fumbled in her jacket pocket, fingers closing around the last of his ICE grenades. She gripped it, pulled the pin with her teeth, and dropped the grenade out of the driver’s side. The Russians shot at her again, but she ducked down into her seat, counting off.

  Three. Two. One.

  The grenade exploded under the back half of the pursuing jeep, blowing out the rear tyres and killing one Russian soldier instantly. A second later the fuel tank caught and erupted, tossing the others like rag dolls into a breezeblock wall. The wall collapsed, burying the burning wreckage.

  Bridge glanced over her shoulder. No survivors.

  Then she hit a low hill, and the jeep sailed ten feet into the air before crashing down into the scrub outside the settlement.

  “Watch out, BB! Bloody women drivers,” Adrian laughed from the passenger seat, wincing in pain as the jeep bounced and rattled through the scrub. He’d christened her ‘BB’ the moment he discovered she was a French woman named Brigitte. She’d asked him not to. He did it anyway.

  “Don’t call me that,” she grunted, turning to face him. But he still wasn’t there. Of course he wasn’t. He never had been. Adrian was dead, lying in the server room rubble, lost forever.

  Her eyes stung with tears. She cried out, unleashing pent-up adrenaline in a wordless scream that was lost to the empty landscape, drowned under the waves of wind and engine noise.

  She wiped her eyes with a filthy sleeve and clung hard to the wheel.

  28

  If anyone had asked for her first impressions, Bridge would have said security at the Guichetech facility could be tighter.

  It wasn’t terrible, exactly. The grounds were surrounded by a security fence topped with razor wire, with only a single gate, and being in this relatively flat, featureless region of the country afforded the location good all-round visibility. It would be almost impossible to sneak up on the facility without being seen. At the gate her car was swept for bugs, and upon entering the lobby of the facility itself, she and her briefcase were put through a scanning setup similar to airport security. But like that security, Bridge knew it was mostly theatre. Someone determined enough, sneaky enough, could get a weapon through if it was disguised and placed well enough. Then there was the social engineering aspect, which didn’t just apply to hacks and stolen passwords. She wondered if the security guards here were paid well enough to resist bribes.

  Getting something into the facility wasn’t their prime concern, though. They were much more worried about people taking things out. According to the operational procedure files Giles had let her access, random searches, scans, and bag checks were conducted every night, and on some evenings the entire workforce was subjected to them before leaving. Bridge would have preferred everyone being searched every single day, but with almost a hundred and thirty staff that would be extremely inconvenient, and seriously affect morale.

  Yesterday, before leaving Vauxhall, she’d asked Monica to monitor the newsgroups, in case any new messages were posted while Bridge was in theatre. After the last message spoke of ‘possible compromise’ they couldn’t be sure the ASCII code would ever be used again. But if there really was a mole, the approaching end of the Exphoria programme would almost certainly mean one or more meetings and handoffs had to be arranged somehow.

  However, Monica had a mountain of her own work to attend to — “Sorry, North Korea’s trying to plant one-click spyware on cabinet-member laptops again, let me hand you to Lisa,” — and so she’d briefed Lisa Hebden, a former ‘Doughnut’ colleague of Monica’s at GCHQ, the government’s electronic surveillance centre. Everyone called it the ‘Doughnut’ because of the building’s flying-saucer shape, which always made Bridge wonder why they didn’t just call it the ‘Flying Saucer’ and be done with it. Perhaps it was a generational thing. Back when GCHQ was built, the idea of adults being entertained by sci-fi sounded ridiculous. How times had changed…but not nicknames.

  Bridge had first met Lisa on her only trip to Telehouse, and a couple of times since at joint briefings. Her primary impression was of a woman who didn’t talk much, and didn’t like being told what to do. At first Bridge had taken against that, but after some reflection realised her own colleagues could just as easily say the same about herself. Besides, Monica knew and trusted Lisa. So Bridge sent her the files, and briefed her via video link. Lisa was sceptical of the whole operation, but would keep an eye on things while Bridge was otherwise occupied.

  And as she was given le grand tour around the Guichetech/Exphoria offices, Bridge could see she really would have her hands full for a while. The site manager, the MoD civil servant spoken of in London, had welcomed her to the facility before immediately excusing himself from showing her around. His name was James Montgomery and he oversaw day-to-day operations, assigned tasks to department managers, supervised staff hiring and firing (although with a project like this, unproductive members were more likely to be shunted somewhere unimportant than outright fired, for security reasons) and reported back to Chisholme’s department in Whitehall. Bridge knew from his file that Montgomery was an officious man, a former SPAD to the Secretary of Defence, with an especially good reputation for his paperwork. And no doubt, there was plenty of that paperwork to go round here. But she also got the impression most of his colleagues were more than happy for him to work somewhere else, where they wouldn’t have to deal with him.

  It fell to Montgomery’s deputy, François Voclaine, to show Bridge around. He complained under his breath in French that he had much more important things to do than be tour guide to a jumped-up secretary, but nevertheless gave an insincere smile and ushered her through
the offices in merely adequate English. She would have understood him better in French, but neglected to tell him that just yet, preferring instead to let him stumble his way through the tour while muttering and grumbling uninhibited to himself.

  Security inside the offices was more impressive, and modern, than outside. Every room and department was sealed off by windowless soundproof security doors, and entered with keycards that were renewed weekly. Most offices contained no more than half a dozen people, while the largest space housed just twenty coders, and Bridge noticed there were even some single-person rooms.

  “Why are these men working alone?” Bridge asked her guide. All the single-office occupants were indeed men.

  Voclaine shrugged in reply. “They make work better alone,” he said. “Many are the elite code writers, who do not have need to be part of a group. Some of the men are not pleasant. Some are both.” Antisocial hackers were nothing new to Bridge, but she nodded firmly, as if digesting this information for the first time.

  In the multi-occupant offices, everyone’s workspace was arranged to prevent staff from being able to peek at each other’s screens. From what she saw, it would be extremely difficult to see what your next-door neighbour was working on without them, and everyone else around you, knowing it.

  “How flexible are your working practices?” Bridge asked. “Can staff work where they prefer?” She knew the answer, but it was the sort of thing an HR inspector would ask.

  “No,” said Voclaine, full of contempt, “everyone is to stay at their desk, and using only their computer. For the security, so these files do not have need to be moved.”

  So there was no ‘hot desking’, where staff might carry their own files with them on a thumb drive and plug in to whichever computer was available. That was good for security, and as they went from office to office, Bridge guessed the working files didn’t live on individual computers. The coders appeared to be operating dumb terminals, linked to a server where the actual data was held. That, too, was good. It would always be easier to secure half a dozen servers and backups, in a controlled and fixed location, than a hundred laptops moving around a building.

  But if data security was this tight, it meant the mole must be clever indeed. To extract and copy files from a secure server, without leaving a trace, took more than plugging in a USB drive and hitting control-C. At some point Bridge would have to take a look at the server logs herself, just to check. But Exphoria operating procedure, which she’d read, dictated the logs be on a constant analyse-and-verify pattern, where unusual behaviour would be automatically flagged up by the server itself, and also double-checked by a rota of human analysts from the coding team once a week. To evade that kind of scrutiny took skill, deep knowledge of a system, and above all a devious mind. The sort of mind that might also come up with the idea of using ASCII art to send encrypted messages.

  For the sake of completeness, Voclaine walked Bridge around the entire facility, including the bathrooms and maintenance crew areas. There were ten maintenance and janitorial staff, all French, and by necessity they had access to every room in the building. But what they didn’t have was any kind of system-login access, and like everyone else on Exphoria, they’d been thoroughly vetted. Bridge couldn’t count them out entirely, but it was unlikely any of them would be the mole.

  No, the most likely candidates were the coders and their project leads, and that was where Bridge intended to focus. She’d already done some preparatory filtering, and if she had to interview every remaining name on the list in order to find the mole, she was prepared to do just that.

  First, though, the tour was finished. Voclaine showed Bridge to her desk for the duration of her stay, in a small room to herself, off the managerial section and near Montgomery and Voclaine’s shared office. It was spartan, with just a couple of chairs, desk, and bookshelf. But like every other room in the building, it had privacy blinds on the windows, so Bridge could work unseen.

  “Monsieur Montgomery and I are both very busy,” said Voclaine, frowning. “If you have need of someone to help you, call the secretary. Also, she can translate, when you make to interview the French staff.”

  “Je vous remercie Monsieur, mais ça ne sera pas nécessaire,” Bridge smiled. “Je parle et comprends assez bien le français. Et maintenant, je souhaiterais parler à Monsieur Montgomery, s’il vous plaît.”

  Voclaine sputtered in disbelief. “I’ll ask him to see you if he’s free,” he replied in French, and stormed out of the room. Embarrassing one of the most senior staff on the project could prove unwise, but Bridge hadn’t been able to resist pricking his bubble. Besides, it wasn’t necessarily all bad. If Voclaine was the leak, throwing him off-guard might force him to make a mistake.

  She arranged what few possessions she had on the desk and shelves, then opened her laptop, a cheap Dell. It was a mission prop, almost empty except for deathly dull HR management files, a spreadsheet of the facility staff, and vetting files. But there was also a secret encrypted partition, hidden from the main file system and password-protected, where Bridge could take her real mission notes before switching back to the regular, boring files when she was done.

  She’d just finished logging in to that boring section when Montgomery knocked on the open door. “I’d advise you to keep this closed at all times,” he said. “Security protocol, you know.”

  Bridge smiled. “Monsieur Voclaine failed to close it on his way out, and I was expecting you. I’ll make sure it’s closed in future, though. Please, sit.”

  “I can’t possibly do the interview now. Frightfully busy, as I’m sure you’re aware. Can we schedule for tomorrow?”

  “This isn’t the interview.” Bridge closed the Dell and clasped her hands on the desk, her smile unwavering. “I’ve been considering how I’m to go about my task here. And as the site manager has ultimate authority, I’d like to run my intentions by you before I begin.”

  The gentle flattery worked. Montgomery sat in the chair on the other side of the desk, and Bridge was reminded of the Carter sting earlier that week and half a lifetime ago. “I understand,” said Montgomery. “Do go on.”

  “The first thing I have to say is —” Bridge paused, and made a show of turning in her seat to look up at the ceiling corners. She turned back to Montgomery, lowering her voice. “Are we, um,” she spun a finger in the air, to indicate the room, “are we being watched? I noticed the outside was covered in cameras.”

  Montgomery dismissed her concerns with a wave. “Not in here. Exterior, absolutely. Every location and angle is covered several times over. Do you smoke?”

  “Yes,” said Bridge, to keep the conversation going. In truth, she hadn’t touched a cigarette in four years, but maybe she was about to start again?

  “Well, even the smoking compound is festooned with cameras. But inside the building there are no such monitoring facilities, for purposes of security. It’s not unusual in operations like this. I don’t know how much you know about the work we’re doing here, Ms Short, but if it were to get out…well, we wouldn’t want that. So, no cameras inside. Why do you ask?”

  “Oh, don’t worry, James — may I call you James? Please, call me Bridget — I’m cleared on Exphoria. In fact, I’m told you’re going to come in on-time, on-budget, and with remarkably little staff turnover.”

  Montgomery straightened his back a little, and leaned back in the chair. “Just doing my job,” he said. “One takes pride in one’s work.”

  Bridge smiled. “Well, it hasn’t gone unnoticed in Whitehall. Part of the reason they sent me out here is to get an assessment from the staff, so we can learn from your managerial process and hopefully implement it in other areas to increase productivity. A happy staff is an efficient staff, after all.” She lowered her voice again and continued, “A little birdy tells me there may even be a new post in it. The department’s changing so much these days, new posts being created all the time…
There are people at the FCO keeping an eye on you, James.” And that, she thought to herself, was completely true.

  Montgomery flushed a little and made a fist. “I knew it.”

  “Knew what?” Bridge had created the entire pep speech out of thin air, so whatever Montgomery knew, it would be quite a coincidence.

  “The celebration party in London,” he said, lost in thought. “A big shindig next month for Exphoria’s launch, with the Secretary and Joint Chiefs and lord knows who else. I’ll be there, naturally, as the project site manager. But I knew there had to be more to it. I wonder if it’ll be black tie…”

  Launch drinks weren’t unusual, although Bridge didn’t know the specifics of this one. But she did recognise vanity when she saw it, and it was fast becoming apparent that James Montgomery had a surfeit of it. Briefly, she wondered if she’d be able to find low-cut blouses and short business skirts in Agenbeux — today she was in a dark trouser suit, with a simple polo neck and ankle boots — but then thought again. She’d known plenty of company men in her clubbing days, buttoned-down careerists who were absolutely proper Monday to Friday, but come the weekend could be found haunting dark, smoky corners of basement clubs, clad in PVC and fishnet. And many of them liked nothing better than a woman in a power suit and heeled boots; whip optional. If that was really James Montgomery’s style, it certainly didn’t hurt that Bridge stood several inches taller than he did. Regardless, he could turn out to be very useful.

  “I’ll start the interviews tomorrow morning,” she said, “and begin with the junior project leads. I’ll have to talk to you and Monsieur Voclaine as well, of course, but that’s just a formality. If I email you a schedule tonight, could you forward it to the appropriate managers? Then I’ll just go and fetch people myself.”

  “Oh, you won’t be able to do that. Your lanyard is only cleared for level B-Limité, which will get you in and out of the main door, and the common areas. Bathrooms, the kitchen, lunch table area, that sort of thing. We’ve also added the necessary access to this office, but that’s all. If you want to go anywhere else, you’ll need to ask my secretary to escort you. And you can email her the list, as well — just CC me and François. I’ll get you added to the internal directory, so you can call people when you’re ready to see them.” He stood, preparing to leave. “Anyway, good luck. And thanks for the tip, it’s good to know Whitehall is pleased with how it’s all going here. We’re a little isolated, to be honest.”