Security Breach

Bev ran her security card across the reader to clock back in after her lunch break. Even before she walked through the door, she sensed something was wrong. The glass safety panel showed that most people in the open plan office were standing, facing the same direction. Is there someone leaving? She wondered. But no, as she pushed through the door she could feel the tension, see the rigid body language and feel the fear.
A man’s voice was shouting “I’ll kill her! Tell me where the scientists are! I know you murder animals so I’ll murder her if you don’t tell me!”

A woman nearby let out a small involuntary squeal, her own fear cutting it short.
Bev sighed. An animal activist. In the wrong building and the wrong Research Council. She moved forward through the silent, stunned crowd with purpose, and some caution, towards where she thought the voice had been coming from. A plan was forming in her mind. A few steps and she could see the man, sweating and shakily holding a gun on Rachel, an office acquaintance. He had her pinned face down on the desk, her arms on either side of her head and the gun jammed into the back of her neck.

“You’ve got the wrong building!” Bev called calmly. The crowd seemed to take in a collective breath, those closest turning to stare at her incredulously, but this opened up her way through and she took it. Stepping forward she walked quickly to get as close to Rachel, and the man holding the gun, as she could before he recovered his wits.
The man looked stunned.
“What?” He shouted at her, nerves making him loud, his eyes wild.
Good, she thought, a novice.
“You’ve got the wrong building,” she said again with calm confidence. “Clearly you have the wrong information. There are no scientists here and no animal testing takes place in these buildings.”
“Liar!” He spat at her, but he was taken completely off-guard as she intended.
“Look around you,” Bev challenged him mildly, “these are offices not science labs. These are only administrative buildings.”
“Liar!” He spat at her again, but with less conviction, she was getting to him.

Behind her she heard the door into the office open, this she guessed in a split second was the result of someone’s call to security. She hoped the security people would stay where they were. She continued speaking to the man in reasonable tones.
“If there were labs here, we would have high fences. There would be warning notices about dog patrols, you would have to pass through a scanner and that would easily have detected that you were armed.” She had made up the last part, but it was clear he hadn’t got a clue. He was looking rattled and fortunately he didn’t seem to have noticed the door opening and closing, his mind was desperately trying to calculate what to do next.

As the door opened and closed again, Bev hoped that this was a security person leaving to call the police. Again, the man was in too much confusion to notice.
“So there is no reason for you to stay,” Bev reasoned with him. “Any protest here will fall flat. How about you let Rachel go and put down the gun?” She said it so mildly she could have been inviting him to lunch, but the calm authority behind it remained.
He was obviously considering what he should do.
“You haven’t harmed anyone,” Bev went on, not giving him too much time to think, “so you can just leave the building quietly.” The moment he slightly relaxed his hold on Rachel she took a step forward, her hand outstretched as she said.
“Shall I take the gun?”
Now he released Rachel and pointed the gun at Bev. She stood her ground, hand still outstretched, and glanced at Rachel who had covered her face with her hands as her body began to shake in silent sobs.
“Shall I take the gun?” Bev repeated. “No harm done,” she said reassuringly, the ghost of a smile on her face as she looked him straight in the eye.
His hand shook, he wavered in confusion, Bev tried a tentative step. She was close enough to take the gun from him.
For a frozen moment she was not sure which way he would choose. Bev kept her eyes on his face but he could not meet her gaze. Bev saw he was crumbling and moved to take the gun from him, his hand released his grip on the weapon and she took it swiftly. She passed it back and away to the nearest man behind her and he got the message that it was safer to have the gun hidden from the intruder.

A ripple of relief went through the office and the security man came quickly to the now embarrassed animal activist.
“I’m afraid our security will need to escort you from the premises,” Bev explained in her still calm and confident manner. And then straight into the hands of waiting police, Bev thought inwardly.
He allowed himself to be gently propelled towards the exit as people stood aside to let them pass. Bev looked round for the man to whom she had passed the gun, he caught her attention and indicated the weapon tucked behind a ring binder on a nearby desk. She nodded and picking up an envelope usually used for internal communications she lifted the gun from the desk with a pen and deposited the weapon inside it.
She turned to see the security guard guide the animal activist through the office door and away. The change in atmosphere in the open plan office was palpable.

“Well done, Bev!” She looked up to see the man who had taken the gun smiling at her. A couple of others close by congratulated her.
“Thank you,” she said graciously, “but I’m not sure it’s over until he’s safely in the hands of the police. Could someone phone down to reception and check that they know what has happened here and that the police are on their way – or better still, already here?”
A senior manager made his way over to her from the group consoling Rachel. He added his congratulations on her calmness and presence of mind, adding a mild rebuke at putting herself in so much danger and asked what she was planning to do with the gun?
She explained that she would take it down to the police once she knew the animal activist was safely in their custody. Just at the moment she would prefer to have the man and the gun at a good distance from each other. He nodded his agreement.

A colleague named Peter came over and told her he’d called reception.
They were unaware of the gun, he told her, but the police had been called and were expected imminently. He’d asked them to call him back when they arrived.
“We might hear sirens,” the senior manager commented.
“I hope not,” Bev replied.
“Hearing those could make an animal activist jumpy,” Peter agreed.

Gradually the usual level of office hub-bub returned as people drifted back to their desks and commented to each other in hushed tones on the events of the previous few minutes. Some regarding Bev with an expression approaching awe.
Peter’s phone rang and reception confirmed that the police had arrived and were taking custody of the animal activist. They had been made aware that he had used a gun and the security man had told them it was still upstairs in the office.
Bev took her cue and started her journey down two floors to reception. In truth she would have liked to have taken the lift but a first aider and a friend of Rachel’s were using it to transport her to the first aid room to recover.

Bev’s legs were feeling slightly wobbly. She didn’t hurry and by the time she’d reached the landing of the next floor down Peter had caught her up and obviously intended to accompany her. Had he realised her resolve was failing? She couldn’t tell, but she was glad of his company.
“That took real guts, Bev,” he told her, “you acted like a pro! None of us knew what to do. But for the gun we would have panicked completely, but it was just too dangerous with the way he was holding poor Rachel. I just couldn’t think straight. I guess it was the same for most of us. But you just walked in and dealt with it.” His tone approaching incredulity.
“Actually, he annoyed me,” Bev told Peter. They had reached the next floor down, one more to go she told herself, willing her legs to work properly.
“Annoyed you?” queried Peter, puzzled.
“Yes,” she confirmed “because he had no idea what he was doing. He hadn’t found out where scientists do experiment on animals, he didn’t know which research council was responsible for what research. He just dived in in the most dangerous way – armed and jumpy. Even though these three buildings are large with several floors it hadn’t occurred to him that this might be a problem!”

Bev realised her voice had taken on a higher register in her exasperation and the aftershock of the situation. Calm down she told herself. They had reached the ground floor and turned the corner into reception. A member of the security staff held up his arm to prevent them going any further. Bev was about to explain to him that she was the person who had disarmed the intruder when another security man told his colleague that she should be allowed through. His expression registered surprise at this news but he said nothing and let both her and Peter pass.

Several security staff were standing around the reception desk and the receptionists themselves were standing well back with apprehensive expressions. Bev looked out of the double doors and could see that the animal activist was now in the back of a police car, of which there were two. Bev hung back, she was aware that being bundled into the back of a police car was not what she had promised the intruder and she wanted him to forget about her, not see her confidently handing his gun to his captors, just in case revenge crossed his mind.

Peter saw her hesitancy and seemed to assume she’d lost her nerve and offered to take the gun out to the police. Bev did not wait to see the gun handed over but turned to the receptionist she knew best, Karen, and thanked her for calling the police. Karen was visibly shaken and stammered slightly that she was glad they had arrived so quickly. Bev agreed. She asked if Karen knew how the man had got into the building and she visibly blanched.

“A bit too easily,” she replied as she began her story. “He gave his name to Sharon and that of the person he’d come to visit, without hesitation. He’d signed in, and Sharon had noticed his hand shaking but she’d passed it off as due to exertion coming over the bridge and down the steps from the station.”
Bev commented that Sharon must be pretty shaken. Karen agreed that she was and told Bev that she’d been taken into the office to calm down. Amongst other things, Bev thought. Karen continued relaying events to Bev. “Although Sharon had called the person whose name had been given, there was no reply. As it was lunch time there were few people in his area of the office, so no one had questioned it. The man had feigned a recollection that they were to meet in the restaurant and he had been allowed through.
“You really are on the front line here,” Bev commented. Karen nodded.

Their conversation was cut short by two police officers entering the building and a whole host of planned measures began to swing into action. Peter had returned behind the policemen and suggested a trip to get a coffee. “I’d prefer tea,” she commented and just about managed to keep pace with him up the stairs despite her shakiness.

The lunch time busyness had not thinned out in the restaurant and it was beginning to buzz with the news of the incident. Peter offered to buy the drinks and suggested Bev found a seat. She settled gratefully into a tub chair by the window and waited for Peter to bring her tea. The possible consequences of what she had done were beginning to filter through to her. Bev had learnt to suppress her emotions as she was growing up to such an extent that at times of stress she found she could slip into a state which allowed her a detached focus on action. Only afterwards did the emotions filter through to do their damage.

When Peter brought her tea, she took it in both hands to steady the white mug that he presented to her. She sipped it and realised he had been thoughtful enough to provide the classic hot, sweet tea prescribed for shock. “Thank you,” she sighed gratefully.
“You’ve been through an ordeal,” he said simply.
“Not as bad as Rachel’s, she replied, and I have a feeling Sharon is going to feel as though she’s been inside a washing machine’s spin cycle!”
Her comment made them both smile and broke some of the tension.
“What you did…” Peter began, “how did you know what to do?”
“I didn’t exactly,” Bev replied, “when I came back from lunch, I realised there was something awful going on. The first words I heard that guy say was the loud, angry demand to be told where the scientists are that kill the animals. He made me angry and exasperated at the same time.”
She paused, aware that she didn’t want to repeat the higher pitched tone she had reached on the stairs when answering Peter.
“I formulated a plan as I was edging forward and guessed that the best approach would be to back-foot him.”
“Through a calm manner and common-sense information,” Peter supplied.
“And fortunately, it worked.”
“Although he did point a gun at you,” Peter reminded her.
“Well, yes, but by that stage he was already close to giving up because he had very few options. I don’t think he really wanted to harm office staff – that would have defeated his goal.”
“I don’t think he was very bright, either,” Peter commented.
“I think you’re right. His lack of preparation and confusion when presented with the facts certainly didn’t mark him out as intelligent.”
“Well, drink up, the police are going to want to question you, he told her, we can only hide in here so long.”

She smiled and began sipping at her tea. Peter gazed out of the window as he drunk his coffee and Bev was again grateful for his considerate company, allowing her to be quiet for a while without any demands. Going over the events for the police would not be pleasant but she decided that she would try and stay calm, as calm as she had sounded when speaking to the animal activist. She closed her eyes and promised herself a long, candlelit bath when she got home – perhaps with a glass of wine and a box of tissues! That could be a long way off, she told herself. But good to look forward to for a sense of perspective. In the meantime, the tea was calming.
In what seemed only a few moments later, she felt a hand on her arm and Peter said, “Bev, the police want to speak to you.”