The Magpie Trap: A Novel

by AJ Kirby

  ‘What regiment was it then?’ smiled Hunter, knowingly.

  ‘The Royal Fusiliers; we’re all ex-forces here, it’s like a bloody retirement home.’

  Retirement home, thought Hunter, incredulous. That’s the last thing I need. It’ll drive me to an early grave.

  ‘I’m ex-West Yorkshire Police myself,’ said Hunter. ‘I mostly worked in Leeds.’

  ‘R-i-i-g-h-t,’ said Burr, with no little suspicion in his voice. ‘No other ex-coppers here…’

  ‘May I ask you a question?’ asked Hunter. ‘Why were you not expecting me when I arrived here earlier? And why did it take the driver of the truck in front of me to let you know that my Volvo was right behind it?’

  Burr remained ominously quiet.

  ‘I’m not blaming you for anything, but are there not procedures in place? I know that I arrived a bit early, but nonetheless…’

  ‘A bit early? You are four hours early sir,’ said Burr, finally.

  ‘I had to see what the site was like when it was a normal day; if I’d have arrived here at the expected time then people would have tried just that little bit harder to make a favourable impression.’

  ‘So; you want to see the site?’ Burr led them towards the Security Lodge and they had to pause as he held two access passes against a reader at the side of the pedestrian turnstile, a green light indicating that they could proceed. Hunter noted that a CCTV camera perched above the turnstile had whirred round to capture his image as he passed through. Oh the wonders of new technology.

  ‘You need two passes?’ asked Hunter.

  ‘Well, actually, each door needs a double-verification so that nobody is ever left alone on site… it’s a security risk. Here, the card-access points interact with the CCTV system allowing the camera to monitor each door every time it is used; it’s a multi-layered security structure.’

  ‘So how come you have two passes?’

  ‘Well, it’s because they’ve issued me with an extra one so that I could let my new boss in today,’ said Burr, almost too quickly. ‘If you hang on sir, then Mick Stephenson will be down from the Main Monitoring Centre with your own pass. HR will be processing your paperwork as we speak.’

  Hunter looked at his new colleague with interest, studying the rotund man’s red face. Was he embarrassed about something, or was he simply out of breath from the walk?

  Hunter had the policeman’s ingrained habit of memorizing faces. He could scan them as if he were a computer program; identifying minor defects, distinguishing marks and committing them to a huge storage bank in his head. He would judge the distance the eyes were apart, the size and shape of the nose, the trajectory of the mouth; he had become so adept at this skill that it had become second nature. Something learned, rehearsed and natural; like riding a bike or driving a car. Burr’s face was flabby, but not in the way that suggested jollity; he had mean piggy eyes and huge bushy eyebrows. Gingery stubble erupted angrily from seemingly every pore. He looked as though he was quick-tempered and aggressive; in fact, he looked very much like an angry bear.

  Eventually, it seemed, the ursine security guard realised that he could stand around talking by the gate all day but Hunter wasn’t going to go away. He led the way through to a sparse, white waiting room, round the back of the Security Lodge. It was populated only by a number of school-style lockers and a double-screen which looked like one of the metal detectors they have in airports.

  ‘When you come through here, you have to pass through these metal detectors,’ said Burr, gesturing to the scanner by the doorway. ‘You also have to hand in your mobile phone, or any other electronic device.’

  ‘Mobile phone?’ asked Hunter, staring.

  ‘Every member of staff and every visitor willingly hands in his mobile phone. Phones are particularly frowned upon because they can now be used as data storage tools. A mobile phone can, in theory, transmit video images from the site to any given computer across the world; they are a huge security risk.’

  Hunter passed over his own brick-like device, noting Burr’s amusement. Then they passed through another access point and entered the main portion of the Security Lodge. The room was largely taken up with a huge bank of monitors on one side, and a huge bullet-proof glass window at the front. The bank of monitors was flanked by a large potted cactus; the only personal touch in a space which was all clean lines, shaded in plain greys and blacks. There was a small sink in the corner, and a cork board populated by Health and Safety notices, but otherwise the only colour was a large red panic button below the desk, which communicated directly with the police station. A tidy room is a tidy mind; no distractions, noted Hunter with some degree of satisfaction.

  The thick glass window gave a warped view of the world; something about the reinforced glass diluted the shapes and colours in the foreground. It also made the atmosphere of the Security Lodge seem a bit closed off, remote even, meaning that he wouldn’t be able smell danger as well as he had been trained.

  ‘Like a brew, sir?’ asked Burr.

  ‘That would be very nice,’ replied Hunter. ‘Coffee. Black; no sugar.’

  ‘Sweet enough already?’ said Burr, grinning. Hunter hated such meaningless platitudes, such rehearsed non-entity comments. He also despised the liberty which Burr was taking by using such a tone with him, a new boss whom he had only just met.

  The kettle boiled away; the only noise in the room. Hunter pretended to be interested in the Health and Safety notices. Why did he already seem to be wrestling with this bear? Must try harder…

  Finally Burr handed him a chipped mug of what looked like thick, lumpy gravy, or perhaps tar. Hunter slowly sipped the scorching coffee, wincing at its bitterness.

  ‘Sugar was just one of a litany of sins which I turned my back on when I left the force; there, the coffee was so bad that it was virtually undrinkable without a lump or two,’ he said.

  ‘Sometimes you need to have the sweet things to help you get through the day.’

  ‘No,’ said Hunter carefully, as though weighing up how much to tell his new colleague. ‘I had a false alarm with the old ticker. Like the drink and cigarettes, sugar had to go. The doctor told me that I had to not just cut-back on such luxuries, but completely purge myself. My very own permanent Lent.’

  ‘Sorry to hear that sir; no drink? That must be tough.’

  ‘Had to be done,’ said Hunter, fiddling nervously with his tie. ‘It was a major lifestyle change; for weeks after, I was at a loose end and had trouble sleeping; hours seemed to drag remorselessly. Without the usual escape route of the pub every night, I found myself staring blankly at the television screen night after night.’

  ‘That’s what most of the nation do anyway,’ said Burr, resolutely not looking at Hunter. It seemed that Burr had been prickled by that familiar unease that Hunter recognised in most people that he told about his new tea-total lifestyle. Deep down he knew Burr would want to know why. Was it religious reasons or alcoholism; illness or some character flaw? Whatever it was, the decision not to drink automatically implied that there was something wrong somewhere within the other person. On the other hand, it seemed that Hunter had developed the recovering alcoholic’s characteristic of having to tell people that he didn’t drink within minutes of meeting them.

  They stared out of the window in silence. Hunter’s mood was hardly improved by his sight of a lone magpie, perched on top of the corrugated iron roof of a nearby cabin, a monochrome harbinger of doom. Hunter was very superstitious about single magpies and would have saluted it if he wasn’t so sure that Burr was watching his each and every move. Finally the tension was eased by a knock at the window. A lanky bearded man beamed at them through the glass.

  ‘Ah; Stephenson’s here,’ said Burr.

  Hunter immediately thought student. The man looked as though he’d never worn a suit before; the one he was wearing may well have been borrowed. It was ill-fitting and discoloured. But at least he’d made some kind of token effort to impress his new boss.
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br />   Burr walked Stephenson through the metal detectors and into the Security Lodge and made the introductions.

  ‘This is Mr. Hunter; the new Head of Security; Mr. Hunter, this is Mick Stephenson. Mick runs the Main Monitoring Centre.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you, Mick,’ said Hunter, grasping the bearded man’s clammy hand. ‘I believe that you have all of my paperwork and my access pass for me?’

  ‘Umm… sir, HR released your pass yesterday. It was supposed to be here in the Security Lodge,’ said Stephenson, staring at the floor.

  ‘What do you know of this, Burr?’ asked Hunter.

  ‘Well, it’s not here, is it? Bloody HR – they’re always making cock-ups like this. They blame this new system they have up there in their ivory tower.’

  ‘So access passes regularly go missing?’ asked Hunter, incredulous.

  ‘Oh yeah,’ said Burr, making a dismissive gesture with his hammy hand. ‘Not a problem if the cameras monitor all the entry points anyway.’

  ‘I think that I will have a look into this; the impression I got was that this place was being run like a very tight ship.’

  ‘There’s a few teething problems with the integration of all of the new security systems,’ admitted Stephenson. ‘And then there’s always the people-problem. You can put in all of the control measures in the world, but there’s no accounting for what people will forget, or how many mistakes they make.’

  ‘Spoken like a true computer geek,’ sneered Burr.

  ‘No; I’d like to know more. Mick; why don’t you take me on this tour of the site? Burr can stay here and man the Security Lodge.’

  Burr’s face turned several shades deeper red and his bushy eyebrows twitched in anger. You could quite easily describe him as being like a bear with a sore head; in fact, you could even drop the word ‘like’. Burr was a bear with a sore head. Hunter, meanwhile, was a shark. Cold, dark eyes stared impassively at Burr, as though daring him to question his authority. In this particular duel, shark won out over bear, and Burr eventually flopped, defeated into the swivel chair.

  ‘Thanks for the coffee,’ said Hunter, as a parting shot.

  Stephenson led Hunter out of the Security Lodge and headed straight for the panopticon. On the way, they passed through a series of four access control points which as well as monitoring the movements of the site visitor, also ensured that they followed proscribed routes through, avoiding any sensitive areas. As they approached the panopticon, Hunter realised that it cast a shadow over virtually the whole site. It inspired an atmosphere of being watched which was almost more effective than the proliferation of CCTV cameras.

  ‘The Main Monitoring Centre is the entire top floor,’ said Stephenson. ‘It’s like being in an air traffic control tower.’

  ‘The panopticon is a part of the structure of many prisons, isn’t it?’ said Hunter.

  ‘Yes, sir; I read up on that when I started working here. They put the panopticon in the centre of a circle of cells and that way, every man in every cell is made to feel as though their every move is being watched.’

  ‘How many staff do you have up there?’

  ‘In the day-time, we generally have a staff of six people. I generally cover the night shift though, when we only have a skeleton staff on site. Since Edison’s Printers have invested in new technologies such as the Precisioner printer, fewer staff are needed on site in order to facilitate the actual printing of money. There’s not much to watch!’

  They approached the large stone building which represented the central point of the site, and Jim realized that he’d hardly seen any other people on site at all. There was an eerie quietness everywhere, not the hustle and bustle of a working print-works he’d been expecting. Where was everyone?

  ‘So; tell me a little bit more about the Main Monitoring Centre and how it all works.’

  ‘The MMC staff are employed to survey all of the surveillance feeds from the cameras on site. As there are so many cameras, we can’t scrutinise them all at once. Instead, we can select the camera views which warrant special attention by analyzing the data produced in a computerised log which monitored activity at each of the doors on site, and the alarms systems which protected each particular building.’

  Stephenson talked as though he was a tour guide, or as though he was trying to justify his existence.

  ‘You rely on this technology quite a lot then,’ observed Jim.

  ‘It’s the most effective way of managing the site. The manpower required to perform the same function would simply be too expensive. The log records any tampering, any unauthorized access or any faults on the communication lines in each of the buildings. The staff can then manually select a particular camera and actually manipulate its movements in order to check the area – it’s almost as good as actually being there.’

  But you are not actually there, Hunter reflected. He would, obviously, have preferred to rely on technology a little less. He would have liked his staff to actually be able to physically check out any problems themselves.

  They entered the ground floor of the old mill building and walked across a vast stone floor. Hunter waited as Stephenson called the lift to take them up to the MMC. He was struck by the vast differences he’d observed in the behaviour of his two colleagues. Mick Stephenson was clearly one of the new breed of security staff, whose training owed as much to IT as it did to any background in the armed forces or police. In fact, the more Hunter spoke with Stephenson, the more he was impressed by the man’s knowledge.

  The lift deposited them safely on the top floor, and as the doors slid open, Hunter was met by a scene of seeming chaos. Tentacle-like cables trailed everywhere, as though technology was reaching out its arms to strangle all life out of the space. Every available surface was covered with monitors, keyboards, joysticks. Four human beings clung to their desks as though survivors of some huge electronic storm. As though anticipating Hunter’s shock, Stephenson began reeling off excuses.

  ‘It may look a mess, but we know where everything is. There’s been a massive changeover in the monitoring technologies, and we are still trying to catch up. The way that the systems communicate with each other has traditionally been over cable and phone lines. Now, there’s a far more effective way of doing this; via the internet. That’s eventually where we want to be…’

  ‘Hmmm,’ said Hunter, studying one of the big-screen monitors on the wall. He felt out of his depth in front of a computer screen, let alone with talk of internet technologies and security system communication techniques. He continued to make sounds, which he hoped sounded like an appreciative commentary, but in reality, could think of absolutely no response.

  Finally: ‘So; what’s this place that most of the cameras seem to be viewing?’

  ‘That, Mr. Hunter, is the Precisioner Unit.’

  ‘You could hardly conceive that it could be so small… All you’d have to do would be pick up the thing and run out with it. Isn’t it? Isn’t that all you’d have to do?’ said Stephenson, excitedly, as though he’d been asked to give a talk on his favourite subject. ‘Of course not; the Precisioner here deserves the best. Think of the almost mythic ideal of a high security location.’

  ‘Fort Knox,’ said Hunter, feeling as though he was being railroaded by some crazy zealot; he shifted from one foot to the other. They were standing outside the Precisioner Unit in a loading bay. Yet again, there was no sign of any other site workers.

  ‘Well, here, like Fort Knox, there are both physical and logical barriers to be overcome. There is only one entrance to the building; a door which weighs about twenty-one tonnes. Shifting that door by force would be the equivalent of pushing three surly African elephants out of your way; three African elephants whose mass has somehow congealed into one grey angry, door-shaped immovable object.’

  ‘African elephants?’ said Hunter, not quite following where Stephenson was going with this.

  ‘It would be so much better to simply ask the elephants to move, but then you’d nee
d the access code, and no single person has the access code. No, the access code is written into the tiny micro-chips on the access cards.’

  As if to demonstrate this, Stephenson produced his own access card from his suit jacket pocket, and held it up to the card reader. With his other hand he passed Burr’s spare card over the reader at the other side of the door. The LED turned from red to green.

  ‘The code only makes sense once two cards are presented to the door at the same time. Then the two codes form a key, which only for that moment matches that required at the door. And of course, the codes constantly change, and are therefore impossible to predict, or to manufacture.’

  They passed through the heavy door and into a narrow corridor led them on a swift descent.

  ‘We’re going underground,’ said Stephenson. ‘Can you feel the air become thicker?’

  It was true; the air had a stuffy, recycled quality. There were no windows, just plain magnolia walls punctuated by a thin yellow strip which pointed them in the right direction. As if they’d need anything to point them in the right direction, reflected Jim; Stephenson seemed to know the place as though he lived there. Unconsciously, Hunter was running his hand along the wall, and it seemed that Stephenson even had a comment about the walls.

  ‘These unremarkable walls are deceptive; they are in fact lined with granite.’

  ‘I think I get it; the place is pretty secure,’ said Hunter with a wry smile. The smile was quickly wiped off his face however, when he entered the main part of the Precisioner Unit, a space with the equivalent square footage to an aircraft hangar. Sitting there was a giant pile of money; fresh-faced and full of talcumy newness, ready to enter the world, ready to become. Hunter’s face was now a mask of awe.

  Suddenly, Hunter became aware that Stephenson was tapping him on the shoulder. He realised that the bearded man was showing him something else in the room; what looked like an electronic instrument inside a huge steel cage.

  ‘The Precisioner printer,’ said Stephenson, with obvious pride. ‘A single printer which can print vast amounts of currency in very short spaces of time. A masterpiece of engineering, but what really sets it apart is its capacity to print over fifty infra-red and ultra-violet watermarks on each of the notes, making any potential counterfeiter almost redundant.’