De Payns was in the middle of his third breakfast coffee, but with no hangover thanks to the Islamic Republic’s attitude to public intoxication. It was easier just to have two beers and call it a night. It didn’t concern de Payns that much, but Templar finished most days with several glasses of something and he wasn’t impressed.
Now it was after 9 a.m., the other guests had already cleared out and Brent and Thierry were upstairs, calibrating their spinning equipment. De Payns was ill at ease. He’d woken up early and stressed, thinking about Manerie and Shrek and wondering at what point he had to talk to Briffaut … or Shrek himself? Manerie’s belief that there was a mole at the Bunker was not far-fetched. Someone had sabotaged the Palermo operation—probably a Company insider, or someone being fed by such a person. He had a head filled with Murad, Manerie, Lambardi and a mole with no name. Too many loose ends. He hadn’t dwelled on it since the night Lambardi was killed, but he’d woken thinking about it and the blue rats were gnawing.
‘Coffee still on?’
De Payns looked up and saw Templar, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt with a Reebok backpack on his shoulder, back from his overnight recon. The waitress approached and took an order for two coffees.
‘How we looking?’ asked de Payns, embarrassed that his friend had caught him in a pensive moment.
Templar leaned forward on his forearms. ‘The person of interest is a middle-aged Arab male with a cheap suit and shoes,’ said Templar. ‘But they all dress that way, even at the top of the government. He may not be running the whole MERC, but he’s high enough to ride in an S-Class Mercedes. Remember, people are more modest about displaying wealth in this country. It’s not like Syria.’
‘Habits?’ asked de Payns.
‘Black Mercedes arrived to pick him up at seven thirty-six this morning, one driver and one bodyguard,’ said Templar, pausing and leaning back as the waitress brought two black coffees. ‘It’s all on the card, but it’s wiped for now.’
Templar was talking about the protocol for recon photographs in the DGSE. You took your shots amid lots of filler that supported your legend. But the photographer deleted the shots to be used back in Paris immediately after taking them. They were retrieved with special software that could reconstitute shadow data, but the trick was to wipe the shots immediately after taking them or the numbering of the shots on the SD card would reflect missing images, something the ISI would look for.
‘So, a middle-aged man and two bodyguards; they all get in the car and go to work?’ asked de Payns.
‘They took off on the same route they used last night.’
‘So now we have three people and three IMSIs,’ said de Payns. ‘We have to isolate the VIP’s.’
‘We go back?’ asked Templar, draining one cup of coffee and reaching for the second.
‘We go back,’ said de Payns.
They made three-point alignments in their hotel rooms and headed out after 10 a.m. They concentrated their photography and driving in the north of the city, taking notes and using a map for directions. The mission phones were usually cheap and démarqué, specifically built to suit the operative’s legend but not capable of being used for navigation. They’d load them with pictures of family and colleagues, and a contacts list that reflected their fake profession. French secret service operatives almost never carried smartphones on missions because they carried so much personal data that the data would give away the operative. Even the lack of data on a smartphone would ring alarm bells.
They filled up the Canon’s storage cards with images and downloaded them onto the laptop, and de Payns continued to fill his notebook with observations and suggestions for locations and scenes. He even made thought bubbles for songs that would play well.
They ate in reasonably priced cafes, tipped the waitresses and engaged in conversations about the Islamabad Museum, which contained a two-million-year-old human tool, a product of the ancient Indus civilisations.
They moved southwards at the end of the day, and at 5.32 p.m. bought their coffees at the petrol station with the yellow awning. They stretched, lit cigarettes and played with their phones, waiting for the evening exodus from the MERC. They had three IMSIs listed in the black Mercedes and their job was to whittle it down to one. One person of interest from the MERC, matched with one cell phone IMSI—that’s when the Company could make inroads into the facility.
They spotted the first car speeding from the MERC gatehouse towards the T-junction at the main road, and they crushed their cigarettes and moved to their Nissan. The black Mercedes drove past and the team found a slot in the traffic so there were two vehicles between the two cars as they headed north. After ten minutes, they had the same three IMSIs that they’d caught the day before. They followed the Mercedes, now staying further back and verifying the IMSIs being used in the car.
They drove back into the city and arrived at the Pearl Continental in time to freshen up and go out for dinner at a restaurant around the corner that had left discount vouchers at the hotel. The waitress brought water and menus to their table, and departed without smiling. When she was out of earshot de Payns asked Templar if everything was okay.
‘They searched our room,’ said Templar, deadpan. ‘Yours?’
‘Ours too,’ said de Payns. ‘They were smart enough to return the bouletage.’
‘But not good enough to spot the three-point alignment,’ said Thierry.
The four of them looked at their menus, seeing only Urdu script and what appeared to be bad English translations.
‘The game is on,’ said de Payns. ‘Time to play.’
De Payns kept the pressure on the team the next day. They established that the VIP lived alone, except for a live-in bodyguard and a driver who made random circuits of the suburb while the VIP was sleeping.
Templar had been meticulous about wiping the shots of the VIP as soon as practical after they were taken. In the French secret services operatives had to be able to take a good photograph—from up close, from two miles away, from a suitcase, from a phone, from a plane and underwater. People didn’t work in the field until they could do that, and do it using a range of equipment.
During the daylight hours of the fifth day, the Thursday, Templar disappeared, leaving de Payns to drive the car. In the early evening he met Templar at a cafe in the south of the city. Templar was sitting under a TV that was blaring out a soccer match because he preferred to have public conversations in an area where there was white noise. He reported that during the day a cheap and battered car was parked in front of the VIP’s house and unshaven, badly dressed men were inside.
‘Your conclusion?’ asked de Payns.
‘That house is clearly under surveillance, and by the way these guys were occupying his house, I’d say it’s a common event. The place is checked every day.’
‘ISI?’ asked de Payns.
‘Probably, but not their A-team.’
De Payns shook his head. ‘We’re not getting into that house then.’
‘No, we’re not,’ agreed Templar. ‘That driver does passes as well. They might even have an overwatch operating, that’s why my hide is so far back.’
De Payns sipped on his coffee and thought about it—they were Day Five in Pakistan, their rooms had been searched and they had identified a VIP who was minded by the ISI. They had yet to isolate the VIP’s phone number, but they had three numbers—one of which was the VIP’s—and the techs back at the Bunker now had something to monitor. De Payns wasn’t exactly elated with the results, but they were all still in one piece and he didn’t want to push his luck.