“What was the second option?”
“Say fuck it and become a real manager, in an industry that pays real wages.” Voclaine raised his wine glass and winked. “The games industry is shit now, anyway. I still have old friends there, and they all wish they could escape.”
Bridge smiled, relieved at the mention of a wife and child. It might not stop him getting fresh, but it would reduce the chance of him trying anything serious. “Escape like you did,” she said. “And I bet your family is much happier for it.”
Their food arrived. As the waiter slid plates onto the table, Voclaine smiled back. “I wouldn’t know. I send them a cheque every month, call my son at university every two weeks, and that’s enough contact for me. I’m a free spirit.” That was when he placed his hand on her knee, and while he tried to laugh it off as drunken high spirits after she removed it, Bridge suspected Voclaine was nowhere near as drunk as he made out. Did he simply want to use the wine as an excuse? Or was he hoping Bridge would drop her guard, too, and let something slip?
She poked at her salad, thinking about Voclaine as a coder, and what she’d seen in the server logs before leaving the guest house. According to the logs, Voclaine frequently checked out assorted code branches of the Exphoria project — in other words, transferred the data to his terminal, effectively telling the rest of the team that he was working on it. Some of these sessions lasted half a day or more. That in itself rang alarm bells in Bridge’s mind, but stranger still was Voclaine’s habit of also making commits, or changes to the code. He really was working on it, and as far as she could tell, none of the other coders were flagging up errors or reverting his work.
It was always possible someone else was using Voclaine’s login and terminal to work on the code incognito, and that had been Bridge’s first thought. But it would be difficult, and now that she knew Voclaine was a coder himself, the question was why anyone would bother. The only plausible reason would be sabotage; if you were writing flaws and errors into the code, naturally you wouldn’t do it from your own login. And the lack of CCTV cameras in the facility, perversely for security purposes, meant anyone could use Voclaine’s terminal and remain unseen. But they’d have to get into an office he shared with Montgomery, know his login, and stay there for hours at a time undetected. That seemed impossible, and it left just one conclusion: that Voclaine’s code was good, and he was using Exphoria as an opportunity to show he still had skills, despite years of getting fat on a manager’s wage.
It was also the only thing that made sense. The notion that Voclaine, or anyone, could sabotage a project like this by writing bad code was ridiculous. Coders were always reluctant to tell their boss if his commits were bad, for obvious reasons. But on a project like this, with so much money at stake, and so many highly-skilled people reviewing every line? It was inconceivable that seventy-plus coders, reviewers, and testers would all lack the balls to point out bad code just because it was written by a senior manager.
So Voclaine’s actions were highly unusual, but hardly treason. Perhaps not even espionage. The logs confirmed what she’d been told, that there was no sign of unverified data extraction or copying. Whatever his reasons for working on the code, they didn’t seem to involve copying them onto external storage.
For the second time tonight, Bridge was frustrated that her cover wasn’t suited to asking the kind of technical questions she so desperately needed answers to. She wished they could have sent her in as a tester, or better still a coder. But she knew why they hadn’t. Nobody would trust a last-minute addition to the engineering team, and as soon as she started to ask those kinds of questions people would become yet more suspicious. The mole might even directly suspect she was SIS or French DGSI. At least this way, her being a government employee was built into the cover, and allowed her to talk to anyone she liked without raising suspicion. In the long run, that kind of access was probably more useful than being able to ask geeky questions.
Plus, now that Voclaine had opened up about his past as a games programmer, Bridge could simply ask questions under a pretence of ignorance. But she let the matter drop for now, not wanting to push too hard. Instead she laughed at Voclaine’s bad jokes, told him girlish anecdotes about flat-sharing in London, and lied that she had absolutely every intention of marrying an eligible French bachelor one day, bien sûr.
It was exhausting, and as she drove back to the guest house — having bundled Voclaine in a taxi, politely but firmly declining his offer to share a ride while removing his wandering hand from her waist — Bridge considered herself lucky for not having to go through that crap in her everyday life. How regular women managed it without wanting to kill someone, she’d never know. But it had been worth it; she’d learned more about François Voclaine in two hours of dinner than she ever could from thirty minutes of fake HR questions.
And now he was her prime suspect.
31
The next day was Friday, and Bridge interviewed the last of the senior supervisors on her candidate list before entering their answers into the spreadsheet at the end of the day. Then she logged into the secure partition of her laptop and entered everyone’s final, weighted score into a separate spreadsheet, which used her own formula to rank them all by likelihood of being the mole, and/or source of a leak. It didn’t yet include entries for Voclaine, Montgomery, or the other twenty management staff at Agenbeux. She’d deliberately left them till last, to give herself time to get into the role, and find out as much as she could about them before their interviews. Like Voclaine himself. But while he was now suspect number one, she couldn’t ignore the possibility that she might simply have misjudged him. The previous weekend, while she’d been ploughing through the personnel files in advance, she would have placed good odds on the mole being someone at a middling-to-low level, dissatisfied and easy to bribe or blackmail. She was no longer quite as convinced of that, but it remained the most likely scenario.
It was also fair to assume the mole was smart, and may already suspect her real purpose here at the facility. Whoever it was, they wouldn’t want to draw attention to themselves. So anyone whose answers to her questions were completely negative and dissatisfied would find themselves ranked at the bottom of her list. And likewise with anyone who appeared to be too happy, too eager to say everything was fine and dandy — though she couldn’t completely discount the few people that applied to, just in case the mole wasn’t so smart after all.
But mostly, Bridge was interested in those staff who fell squarely in the middle of her ranking. People whose answers were unremarkable and average, who seemed happy enough with their role at ‘Guichetech’ but admitted that yes, they could be happier, because that was human nature.
As expected, that covered the majority of people she’d spoken to so far at Agenbeux. But what the numbers couldn’t take into account was Bridge’s own reading of the staff. How each person behaved when answering, what it said about their personality type, and whether they just felt ‘off’. So much of that relied on instinct and gut feeling, and fortunately, Bridge’s gut had settled down a lot during the week. Giles had been right as usual, and despite her earlier paranoia she soon realised this job wasn’t dangerous. As the days passed she settled into the role, and actually started to relish the challenge of sniffing out a liar every day. She was even looking forward to interviewing the managers.
She’d also found she enjoyed being back in France more than expected. The food, the weather, the people…simply hearing the language of her childhood everywhere helped her relax. She knew herself well enough to guess that after a couple more weeks she’d go stir-crazy, but for the time being she understood why Izzy enjoyed coming back here every year. And now that the weekend was here, with her sister’s farmhouse only a couple of hours’ drive away, Bridge intended to take advantage and pay her an impromptu visit so she could see Stéphanie and Hugo. Fréderic would be there too, but he’d just have to sit and suffer.
A loud rapping on the office door startled Bridge from her thoughts. “Moment,” she said, logging out of the encrypted partition and closing the Dell. She raised the door blind to see Montgomery, smiling on the other side of the glass. She let him in, then walked around the room raising the window blinds.
“Not many left here last thing on a Friday,” said Montgomery. “Mostly us rosbifs, naturally. But even we have our limits, eh? So how’s it all going? You’ll be sending in a good report, I hope?”
“I’m sure you know I can’t discuss that, James. Besides, I have a lot of number-crunching to do. The Department does love its numbers. But I can say it’s certainly promising. I think we can all learn a few things from the way you and François are running things, here.”
Montgomery snorted. “Yes, I heard you had a lovely time last night.”
She paused midway through packing her briefcase. “I’m sorry?”
“Surely,” he said, smug and secure in his victory, “you didn’t think you could have dinner with a man like Voclaine and expect him to be discreet about it.”
Bridge was having real trouble figuring James Montgomery out. She’d hoped he would join her for drinks, so she could try to loosen his lips. As site manager, he doubtless knew much more about what went on here than he’d ever say officially, and might have seen things that seemed perfectly innocent to him, but to Bridge would be a sign of something unusual or noteworthy.
But contrary to her first assumption, Montgomery didn’t seem remotely interested in her, and failed to respond to the smiles and gentle flirting with which she’d laced their brief conversations. It was possible he simply didn’t fancy her, of course. Izzy had always been the more glamorous sister, with men falling at her feet even as she was oblivious to them, while Bridge needed to make an effort. But when she did, it normally paid off. Being a young goth had given her an independent and self-assured side that made her perfectly happy to be the first mover, and in her experience it was an unusual Englishman who didn’t at least flirt back when a tall Frenchwoman flung herself at him.
In his own way, though, James Montgomery was indeed unusual. His egotism seemed reserved purely for his work and status within the MoD, in contrast to Voclaine’s easy willingness to use his position as a licence to grope. Bridge had even begun to wonder if Montgomery was secretly gay, despite his wife and children back in England. Yet now he was talking like a jealous lover.
“We just had dinner,” she shrugged. “We didn’t discuss my work here, and besides, François had a little too much wine, so I put him in a cab and sent him home. If he says anything more than that happened, he’s mistaken.”
“He didn’t say anything specific, but he certainly didn’t deny anything, either.”
“Typical. I assure you, nothing happened. Besides, what’s the problem?”
Montgomery stepped into the room, and closed the door behind him. Bridge had just slid the Dell inside her briefcase, and her hand was still inside it. It closed around the hard cylinder of a small can of pepper spray she kept there.
“The problem, Ms Short, is that you should not be socialising with upper management while you are also conducting a survey of workplace morale. It could influence your results, and your report, and therefore reflect badly on us all.” Bridge relaxed, and removed her hand from the briefcase. This wasn’t jealousy. This was Montgomery showing his desperation to be recognised in the corridors of power, for Whitehall to acknowledge his work here at Agenbeux. She’d planted the seed of that idea in his mind for convenience, just to get him on her side, but now it was growing. She almost felt sorry for him. He was going to be confused as hell when he returned to London. “Besides,” he continued, “Voclaine is a natural curmudgeon. He’s good at his job, but he’s made no secret of the fact that he thinks he deserves my position, and should be in charge of Exphoria. You must bear that in mind when considering anything he says.” He paused, and a sudden thought came to him. “Did he tell you his wife left him?”
“Yes, he was quite open about that.”
“Did he tell you why?”
Bridge shook her head, so Montgomery pursed his lips and made a slapping motion with his hand. She nodded, understanding, and found it easy to believe. Voclaine hadn’t threatened her in any way, but he’d shown more than once that he was, to put it politely, a tactile man. “I see,” she said, “no, he didn’t mention that. But he also said nothing out of order about this facility, or about you. In fact, I don’t think your name came up at all.” She’d meant it to sound reassuring, but regretted it the moment the words passed her lips, and she saw Montgomery’s disappointed expression.
“Oh. Well, well, that’s good. But I insist you don’t do it again, with Voclaine or anyone else for that matter. If you do, I shall have no choice but to inform the MoD and have you removed.”
Bridge was taken aback by Montgomery’s sudden hostility. “That really won’t be necessary. Besides, I’m not entirely sure that’s your call to make.”
“I am in charge of a multi-million euro project facility, Ms Short. You are an HR functionary. I strongly doubt the PUS would prioritise your concerns over mine.”
If only you knew how wrong you are, thought Bridge, but said, “I suppose you’re right. Please accept my apologies, Mr Montgomery. I assure you it won’t happen again.”
He straightened a little at being formally addressed, and opened the door for her. “Very good. Now, do you have anything nice planned for the weekend? I can recommend some excellent local restaurants.”
They left the office together and walked through the quiet, empty corridors toward the exit. “I thought I’d take a drive around and see some of the area while I’m here,” said Bridge. “This is vineyard country, isn’t it? Have you visited any?”
“Oh, yes,” Montgomery smiled, grateful for the chance to show off his superior local knowledge. “I can thoroughly recommend the Fortalbis, about ten miles north-east. It’s a sublime grape, and the sampling is excellent. The owners are descended from Italians, but they’re lovely people all the same.”
Bridge sighed inwardly at Montgomery’s offhand racism. Some things, the English just couldn’t leave behind. “Thank you,” she said, “I’ll be sure to look it up.”
They’d reached the security barriers. Bridge placed her briefcase on the scanner belt and emptied her pockets, making a mental note to research the vineyard. She had no intention of visiting, but James Montgomery didn’t need to know that.
32
At first he assumed it was nothing more than an amusing coincidence. Kids today, he thought, and then shook his head at the ease with which the phrase popped into his mind. Steve Wicker had only recently turned thirty himself, and here he was decrying unruly youth.
There had been just two similar incidents, but it was enough to nag away at him. Was it a common prank? The latest in amateur black hat ‘lulz’? He’d seen nothing to suggest it was, and a cursory scan of the GCHQ monitoring archives also came up empty. When he got to the point of asking colleagues during screen breaks if they’d seen anything similar, he realised that no matter his conscious thought process, subconsciously he was treating it as more than just a coincidence or prank. Especially when two of those colleagues recalled seeing something similar in the past few weeks.
Like Steve, they’d thought it was probably nothing more than ‘script kiddies’ having a laugh, spending someone else’s money on toys they could never afford themselves. But four instances was more than a coincidence.
It took him three days to track down the rest, not least because half of the incidents hadn’t yet been logged. Those victims only found out when Steve called their local police department to check for reports, and they followed up to confirm.
He presented it to his boss Patel, who said, “Are you sure this isn’t just the latest hacker craze? For the lulz, like?”
“That’s what I thought at first,”
said Steve. “But if so we’d expect to see it all around the country, maybe all over the world, right? Not just London and the Southeast.”
“How did you find this? When did you take over identity theft collation?”
“I didn’t. This was blind luck, because of the retail fraud angle. I found two incidents that matched, asked around, and some digging turned up the other…” he checked his notes, “fourteen. Sixteen cases total, over the past four months. Assuming we’ve found them all.”
“Are the cards from a public dump of a known breach? Pastebin, Textdump, something like that?”
Steve shook his head. “Either it’s a private list, or the victims are being targeted individually. They’re all completely nondescript people. No records, no priors, and no flags in our own system.”
Patel spread his hands, trying to get a handle on the situation. “So someone targets innocent people. Steals their identities and credit cards. Uses that information to make precisely one online purchase, which is delivered to a third-party pickup address and collected the next day. After which the stolen identity is discarded, and never used again.”
Steve nodded. “That’s about the size of it.”
“But you think this isn’t sixteen similar cases, all following instructions from a 4Chan thread. You think it’s one person’s MO, doing the same thing sixteen times.”
“Well, that’s my suspicion. But I don’t have any hard evidence, yet. Hopefully CCTV footage from the pickup locations will give me something. I’d like to request that from the locations, but it’ll have to go through Five.”
“Go for it. If you get any pushback from them, CC me in. I’ll wave my big stick around if I have to.”
“Thank you, sir.” Steve gathered up his presentation notes and stood.
Patel gazed into the distance and snorted in frustration. “Drones, of all things?”
The Exphoria Code Page 14
