So as she stood with Montgomery that evening, watching the security feed from a dark room behind one-way glass, she had no idea what to expect. It was a long shot, no doubt. But Montgomery had agreed to his part, and to keep Bridge unseen and anonymous. All she could do now was wait.
On regular weekdays, searches and scans were random. Most people left the building through standard barriers, using their lanyard for access. But Jules, the head security guard, would pick out every sixth or eighth or ninth person for a check, and those people would put their belongings through the scanner, while Jules ran a wand over their outstretched bodies, airport-style.
Today, it wasn’t random. Jules picked out a few people of his own, to obfuscate the real targets, but he also had a list from Montgomery, a list with five names on it, and he was under instructions to pick all five of them for searches.
The first was the tall QA tester, the Bosnian. He placed his bag on the scanner belt, emptied keys, loose change, and a Samsung phone from his pockets, then waited for Jules to run the handheld metal detector over him. The wand remained silent. In the hidden, darkened partition nearby, Bridge and Montgomery watched the feed from the bag scanner. A half-eaten chocolate bar, three sci-fi paperbacks, two packs of cigarettes, a bottle of water, and a metal tub of mints. No electronic devices beside the phone. “Ask him to unlock it,” said Bridge.
“Why?”
“Humour me. Tell him you’re looking for unauthorised apps.”
Montgomery shrugged and left the room, the bright light of the corridor outside piercing the inner gloom. She watched him approach the tester, who took his Samsung, ran a finger over the unlock pattern, and handed it over without protest. Montgomery made a show of swiping through the app screens, but Bridge had already moved on. Either he knew his phone contained nothing incriminating, or the Bosnian wasn’t their man.
Montgomery returned to the monitoring room. “It would help me very much if you told me what you were looking for, you know.”
“I wish I could, James, but I know you understand that I can’t. It’s like porn; I’ll know it when I see it.” Despite the dark of the room, Bridge saw him blush from the corner of her eye.
After two truly random checks, the next person on her list to be pulled aside was Voclaine. He sighed and huffed his way through the ritual of putting his bag on the scanner belt, emptying his keys and iPhone from his pockets, and so on. His wand sweep was clean. But, watching his belongings go through the scanner, Bridge saw that the phone he removed from his pocket wasn’t the only device he carried. There was another inside his backpack, stuffed inside padding by the looks of it, but visible on the scan.
“Bring him in,” said Bridge.
Montgomery hesitated. “François? You can’t think he’s a security risk.”
“Let’s find out, shall we? Just like we discussed.”
Once again he stepped outside, but this time asked Voclaine to enter the security interview room. Voclaine looked at Montgomery like he’d gone mad, and protested loudly. Several other staff were leaving at the same time, and Bridge didn’t need audio to tell they were all wondering what the hell was going on. Just like Voclaine. She wondered for a moment if Jules and the other security guards would have to wrestle the Frenchman into the room, but eventually he relented and stormed in. Montgomery followed, closing the door behind them, and now they were both on the other side of the one-way glass from Bridge.
Bridge silently thanked whoever designed this facility with the foresight to install a private monitoring and interview room. Behind the mirror, Voclaine had no way to see or identify her, but she could see and hear everything on the other side. As if to demonstrate, he sat down and said in English, “Who is behind that glass? Police? DGSE? What in the hell is it all about?”
Montgomery didn’t reply. He’d agreed to keep Bridge’s role in this incognito, so she could continue with her work at the facility if necessary, and Voclaine would have no idea who had accused him. Instead, he hoisted the Frenchman’s backpack onto the table and unzipped it. “Why do you have two phones, François?”
“What does it matter to you?”
Montgomery sighed. “You know the security protocols around this facility as well as me. The moment you set foot on this land, you give up any right to privacy. Now, answer the question…or would you rather I just have you carted off to Château d’If?”
“Château d’If? What in the hell are you talking of?”
Bridge wondered that herself. The legendary prison island itself hadn’t been used for over a century, so the French had recently repurposed the name for their Guantanamo Bay equivalent, a permanent holding pen for suspected terrorists with no rights, no trials, no lawyers. If Montgomery knew about the new Château d’If at all, it suggested he was better connected in the MoD than Bridge had realised.
Or maybe he was just joking. It was hard to tell, with Montgomery.
Inside the room, he upended the backpack and spilled Voclaine’s possessions on the table. Pens, notepads, his wallet, two magazines (one about videogames, one celebrity gossip), an empty water bottle, and a bundled scarf. The phone was nowhere to be seen — until Montgomery picked up the scarf and a second iPhone tumbled out, clattering onto the hard surface.
He had his back to
