La Mécanique de l'ombre, known in English as The Eavesdropper[3] and Scribe,[4] is a 2016 action thriller film directed by Thomas Kruithof in his feature directorial debut.

Clément hires Duval to transcribe recordings of phone intercepts, but he insists on very specific work conditions.

Duval's new workplace is an unfurnished apartment, where he must work alone every day from 9am to 6pm, transcribing phone conversations from cassette tapes, using only an old IBM Selectric typewriter.

Although he initially pays little heed to the content of the tapes, Duval gradually becomes aware that they are evidently intercepted conversations with senior government officials - many involving a government official called Labarthe, and a Middle Eastern lawyer called Al Shamikh - and that all the taped individuals appear to have intimate knowledge of the hostage crisis.

Clément then leads Duval into a bare room where he sees Gerfaut, tied to a chair and bleeding from numerous wounds.

He grabs his passport and all the cash he has saved from his job, and leaves his apartment, but within moments he is seized by two men and bundled into a car.

Arriving home, he is dismayed to see Sara waiting for him; at first he suspects she is in league with Clément, and he angrily demands to know how she knew where he lives, then orders her to leave, but then he collapses, she returns to assist him, and he tells her all that has transpired.

The next day, Duval reluctantly returns to work but he is panic-stricken when he begins typing the next tape, and realises it is a recording of a conversation between himself and Labarthe, and that Clément still has them under surveillance.

He rushes back to his home to find that it has been ransacked by Clément's men, who are searching for the notebooks, and he realises they have also kidnapped Sara, who had stayed the night there.

Labarthe also reveals that the notebooks don't really exist, and that he is merely using their supposed contents as bait to lure Clément out so that they can arrest him.

The tables are dramatically turned when Duval takes matters into his own hands - he seizes Labarthe's wrist, which has a microphone to communicate with his agents, and he shouts "Engage!