All the Devils Are Here(45)

It was a risk he had to take.

Sitting down, he first rifled her desk, or tried to. The drawers were locked, and all he succeeded in doing was rattling them.

Then he turned to her computer. It, too, was locked, but as head of the department he knew her code.

Her computer sprang to life. There was a document already up. The Patagonia project. He’d managed to rattle her after all.

Minimizing it, he began typing, and up came the file on Luxembourg.

Beauvoir knew that their cybersecurity unit could find out who had accessed which files, and on which terminal.

If anyone wanted to know who was snooping around the Luxembourg dossier, on a Saturday, all they’d see was Séverine Arbour. Not him.

He couldn’t get into her emails, he’d need her password for that, but he could get into the main files and bring up internal reports.

Which is what he did.

He was just about to send it to himself when he stopped. That would be a fatal error. Instead, he hit print.

Out in the main office, over by the wall, a large industrial printer sprang to life.

Now he needed to find the emails between the engineer on-site and the executive overseeing the project. Scanning the file, he found the name of the engineer.

And the name of the executive.

Carole Gossette.

He sat back, staring at the name. Madame Gossette. Head of operations. His boss. His mentor.

Now why would such a senior executive be overseeing such an apparently minor project? Because, he thought, it wasn’t such a minor project after all.

There was a soft ding.

“Merde,” he whispered, his heart leaping in his chest. He recognized that sound.

The elevator door at the end of the hallway opened. Without glancing up, Beauvoir tried to stop the printer, but it wouldn’t be put on pause. Hitting the button several times, Beauvoir eventually gave up and put the screen to sleep.

Across the large open room, the Luxembourg file was still printing out. And the guard was getting closer.

There was no way to get to the printer before the guard arrived. Instead, Jean-Guy quickly left Arbour’s office and ducked into his own, leaving the door open.

In the background, he could hear the large machine making what now sounded like a racket.

And then it stopped, and there was silence just as the guard entered the offices.

“Monsieur Beauvoir,” he said. “I’d heard you were in.”

The man was in his late twenties. Tall and sturdy. Fit.

He stopped just outside Beauvoir’s office. Then he turned toward the printer before returning his gaze to Beauvoir.

“Working?”

In his early days at the company, Jean-Guy had come in on weekends, when it was quiet and he could bumble around without anyone seeing. Never had a guard shown any interest.

So why was this guard here. Now. Very interested.

The look, while disconcerting, wasn’t threatening. He seemed to be puzzled, trying to work something out.

“Oui. Can I help you?” Beauvoir asked, looking up from his laptop, as though interrupted.

“No, sir. I’m just checking.”

“Checking what?”

“To make sure everything’s as it should be.”

“Well, it’s not. I should be outside, playing with my son. Instead I’m here.” He smiled and got up.

“Why are you here, sir?”

Beauvoir had never had a guard ask him that. It wasn’t any of his business. And yet the guard seemed to think it was. And maybe, thought Beauvoir with some unease, it was.

“I have a baby coming any day now. Little girl.” He picked up his mug, and the guard stepped aside to let him pass. “When she’s born, I’ll be on leave. I just need to get some of the crap out of the way before the blessed event.”

He’d remembered that the coffee maker was on the wall farthest from the copier. He walked over there now.

“Coffee?”

“No, sir.”

The guard did as Beauvoir had hoped. He followed him to the espresso machine.

“You have children?” Beauvoir peered at the guard’s nametag. “Monsieur Loiselle?”

“No.”

Not a big talker. Now Loiselle began to turn around.

“I was a cop once, you know,” said Beauvoir, desperate to stop the man from turning completely. And possibly seeing the papers the printer had coughed up. “In Québec, as you can probably hear.” Jean-Guy had intentionally broadened his accent, giving his words a twang. He’d been in Paris long enough to know that they viewed the Québécois as slightly thick country cousins.

While this was insulting and ignorant, he now found it useful.

“Got tired of being shot at,” Jean-Guy continued. “And with a family coming …” He left it at that.

The guard’s stare was now intense. Scrutinizing him. Practically, Jean-Guy felt, dissecting him.

Beauvoir could see past Loiselle, into Arbour’s office. Something was happening. The computer had come back to life, and images were flashing across the screen.

Even from a distance, he could see what it was. Emails. Schematics. Being erased.

Fuck. Fuckity fuck, thought Beauvoir. Shit.

But his face remained placid, and his eyes returned to the guard.

“You don’t happen to know how this works?” he said, pointing to the espresso machine. “Trust them to have something you need an engineering degree to work. All I’ve managed to figure out in five months is how to grind the beans.”