The evening after meeting Montgomery, the site manager, Bridge had stopped at a tabac on her way back to the guest house and bought cigarettes. She’d lied to him on instinct; she was trained to keep every line of conversation open, never shut down an enquiry, because it could lead to vital information. So when he’d asked if she smoked, she unconsciously assumed he did too, and was hoping to cash in on smoker’s camaraderie. France was a long way behind the UK, but smoking rates were decreasing here like everywhere else. In fact, he’d only asked because of her enquiry about the CCTV. Montgomery didn’t smoke, and judging by his skin and fingertips, had probably never smoked in his life.
His deputy François Voclaine, on the other hand, was a perpetual inhabitant of the smoking compound. It was a bare yard ringed by a steel fence bolted on to the side of the building, accessible only from inside and invisible from the road. Bridge visited the compound two or three times a day, enough to keep up the pretence and eavesdrop on office gossip, but not so much that she felt in danger of becoming a real smoker again. Almost every time she did, though, Voclaine was there.
The first time she encountered him was mid-morning on Thursday, when she went out for a quick smoke after conducting interviews with some senior coders. She’d started lower down the ranks to get herself in form and up to speed before tackling the more likely suspects on the project teams, and it had worked. After the first half-dozen interviews she’d eased into it, asking each question with enough confidence that she could focus more on the subject’s emotional reaction than the mere words of their answer. Today had continued well, and she was confident about working through some of the senior project leads in the afternoon.
Voclaine stood alone, wearing his trademark scowl. He saw her light up and called over, “Hey, Miss Short. Come here and share a fag with an old warhorse, I want to know how you’re settling in.” He spoke in rapid French; vernacular, colloquial and thick with what Bridge guessed was a Normandy accent. She wondered if he was still stinging from her sudden French outburst yesterday, and trying to catch her out.
“I’m fine,” she replied in French, walking over to his corner, “just never been to this region before. I’m a Saint-Étienne girl.”
Voclaine snorted. “With a name like Short?”
Bridge shrugged. “English father.”
Voclaine made a disapproving noise, but said nothing. There had been no time, and seemingly no real need, to construct an elaborate biography or ‘legend’ for the HR inspector Bridget Short. The legend was fully backstopped, if anyone cared to look, but they’d left the personal history similar enough to Bridge’s own bio that she wouldn’t have to learn an entire fake life.
“So why do you work in London? Why not serve the Republic?”
“Father, again. He was a civil servant, got me a job in the department.” That was one detail created especially for the cover, as an easy explanation.
Voclaine took a drag on his cigarette, and narrowed his eyes at Bridge. It occurred to her that he’d reversed their natural roles entirely, and with ease. Suddenly she was the one being interrogated by a suspicious questioner. “And why the hell does London think we need you here? What does an ‘HR inspector’ do?”
Every instinct in her body wanted to scowl back and reply with as much contempt as the question had been asked. She’d had a lifetime of barely competent middle-aged men questioning her skills and attitude, her bona fides, her basic right to do her job and hold the position she did. Giles was an exception, and that was one reason she’d never looked for a position outside the CTA unit. Twenty-first century or not, the vast majority of the higher ranks in the Service were still filled by men, and most of them retained a distinctly twentieth-century attitude toward women, dividing them into either Secretary or Mata Hari as they saw fit. Anyone who sat at a computer most of the day must, therefore, be a secretary and act accordingly. Bridge had clashed with more than one senior officer over that.
But here, today, she wasn’t herself. Today she was Bridget Short, and Ms Short needed to make the people who worked at Agenbeux like her. The fastest way to do that, especially in a male-dominated environment like this, was to acquiesce and play to their egos.
“Productivity here is very high, and you’ve managed to retain nearly all the staff you’ve taken on,” she smiled. “That’s very unusual for Government projects in England. So I’m here to find out what you and Mr Montgomery are doing to make Agenbeux such a success. I know it’s not very exciting, but at least I get to come back to France and claim it on expenses.” She didn’t quite wink, but her expression was close enough.
Voclaine scowled, crushed his cigarette butt under his heel, and lit another in silence. The moment stretched, and Bridge wondered what she’d said wrong. Had she misjudged him? Her mind raced, playing back the workplace tour alongside the last two minutes of this conversation, searching for a mistake. Her neck grew warm, and the pleasant French summer had little to do with it. Finally, he spoke. “We’re under budget and on time, Miss Short. But you want to spend our money on fine food and expensive wine?”
Bridge was taken aback. She’d thought Voclaine to be a blue-collar labour man, a worker at heart, who’d take any opportunity to stick one to his bosses. And yet, he was worrying about budget and expenses. “That’s, that’s
