Agents On Campus

Questions, Answers, and Riddles

Montgomery looked impressed against his will at my good my accent was and replied to me in rapid Russian, "You make an excellent point. Tell me, where am I from based on the accent I'm using?"

I smiled. These questions are only too easy. "Scotland. You are speaking Russian as if you learned it around age seven."

Montgomery nodded. "Correct," he stated slowly, as if I had done something wrong by knowing the right answer. "Which language do you like best?"

This was not the sort of question I was expecting. What's the right way to answer? Maybe he was trying to see how I responded and should answer presumptuously. Maybe I should say the hardest one so he thinks I'm really good at that one. Or maybe, said a voice in my head, you should just be honest.

"Italian," I answered truthfully, "or French. Maybe Spanish, too."

Montgomery cocked his head to one side and narrowed his dark eyes at me. "Why?"

"Because..."I began, but was lost for words. It's hard to explain why you prefer a language over another. It's like trying to say why you like a certain color—you just do. "Because...when you speak it—it just rolls off your tongue."

"So you like them because they're easier than the others?"

"Not exactly, no," I tried to explain. "There's a beauty—a sort of finesse to the western European languages. It just sounds...nice. It's beautiful to listen to."

If Montgomery thought I was crazy, he was doing a really good job hiding it. I'm sure I sounded crazy, going on about beauty...why on earth didn't I just tell him I liked the easy ones?

"You say you're good at interrogation. What tactics did I use at the beginning of our meeting?"
"The informational overload with the silencing stare."

"Why is it used?"
"Because it's effective. It gives you a better understanding of how easy the suspect, or person you're interrogating, will be to crack. If they get squirmy with the silencing stare, you've got an easy one. In the case of the informational overload, one should only use that when they have actual information to cite that could scare them, otherwise you could risk them calling your bluff and losing the leverage."

Montgomery nodded and gave me a piercing glare. He seemed to be sizing me up. "Are you good at spotting lies?"

"The best," I replied with an arrogant smirk.

"I am going to tell you two things about myself and you are to pick out which one is the truth and which one is a lie."

"Alright then." I could feel my pulse quicken in excitement. This is one thing I thoroughly enjoyed doing. Aaron, Sami, Parker and I would practice with each other all the time. The trick was to notice the person's tell—that is, their sign that they are lying. The only problem is, Montgomery was very self-aware and doesn't seem like the type to let that slip.

"The FBI hired me before transferring me to the GGPC three years later." he stated without hesitation, staring directly into me eyes, "The first ever interrogation I performed alone was thirty-one years ago to the day."

This was hard. I wasn't going to get anywhere with body language—he's too smart to give me a tell. That meant that I would have to rely solely on his word usage. I considered what he said. Intuition told me that he was telling the truth for the second one because he used the word 'I'. When people lie they tend to avoid referencing themselves in that way. If the second one was the truth then that left—

"The first sentence. That's the lie."

Montgomery almost smiled. "Correct. I was a police officer, not an FBI agent," he paused and gave me a piercing glare, "How did you know I was lying?"