“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.
