De Payns sat in the operations SCIF at the Bunker, listening to Brent and Templar run through their plans for establishing ‘environment’ around Anoush al-Kashi, now known as ‘Raven’. When the environment was established, de Payns would make the contact with Raven. The team leaders were selling the strength of their plans, assuring the chef de mission he would not end his days in a shallow grave in the Calmeynbos. To be certain of no counter-measures from the Pakistanis, the team would collect as much environment information as possible on Raven, including family and friends, workplace and leisure habits. The first phase had been establishing identity and a connection between the caller in Islamabad and the receiver in Mons. The full environment was deeper and had to give the Alamut team enough life detail to enable de Payns to infiltrate Raven’s world in a plausible manner.
Brent went through the tech plan. It included cameras at the entrance of Raven’s home, with a lens in the eye of a teddy bear in the back of a car, alternating with another hidden in the streetscape to monitor Raven’s building entry. Brent would have his people mark her car—a small silver BMW—with a device which allowed for the tracking of the target’s cell phone traffic as well as vehicular movement. They now knew she used Gmail on a Toshiba laptop, and intercepting her email traffic was not difficult. Brent’s team had already cracked the target’s two phones, which were being listened to, and the woman’s activity on social networks was being observed.
Templar also had enough people to rotate three teams of male and female agents who would take turns dividing and squaring Raven’s different routes, whether it was taking her daughters to school, bringing them home in the afternoon, going to dance classes or travelling to her translation appointments, including regular visits to the GrowTEK offices. Using several teams to divide and square the target’s routes would give them accurate data but without the risk of easy detection should there be an ISI overwatch program in Mons.
‘We’ll make her mail,’ said Templar, meaning her mail to the apartment would be cleared and opened and returned when she wasn’t around. ‘We’ve already cut our own key to the foyer. Also, we still haven’t seen the husband, but he’s part of this environment. We’ll identify him as well as all her contacts.’
They talked through the logistics of it. A decent environment could take a month and the support teams would have a certain amount of rotation—which would mean travelling back to Paris—but the surveillance would be occurring at all hours, so the teams would have to disperse to hotels and pensions, pay in cash and assemble where their gig started each day or night. De Payns noted the sombre atmosphere—they’d been in Islamabad together, escaping detection, but this was slightly different. They were now surrounding a target who had a direct connection to a VIP from a Pakistani bioweapons facility. If there was counter-surveillance around her it would be professional and ruthless.
‘It’ll be fully sanitised,’ said Templar, nodding. ‘They’ll need a Ouija board to know we’re in town.’
When Templar and Brent had left, de Payns turned his focus to the fictive ID of Sébastien Duboscq. Duboscq was not a new ID for de Payns; he’d used it around Europe and in the United States. The legend was that of a pharmaceutical consultant through his company AlphaPharma Consulting, which had offices in Paris —so named because a generic corporate moniker made it harder for opposing intelligence agencies to search for the owners of it. He’d done monthly ‘gardening’ of his corporate front, including visits to his office in the ninth arrondissement, email responses to prospective clients and attending conferences in Germany and the Netherlands. Duboscq’s approach would be a request for Raven’s translation services. He wanted to ensure his clients in Pakistan and some neighbouring Stans could understand his website, so he needed Urdu and Pashto versions. His Sébastien Duboscq persona was well dressed and smooth. He dressed in smart suits and good shoes and appeared unconcerned by money. De Payns had gone through all the photography from Mons and, judging by her expensive taste in handbags and accessories, Raven’s MICE might include ego. She looked like a bourgeois subcontinental woman who might be persuaded to step up to some romance with a sexy Parisian professional. He made a note to get a better haircut and perhaps wear a men’s fragrance … Paco Rabanne, maybe—something that suggested Sébastien Duboscq might be up for some fun but wasn’t desperate.
He took the Metro east, had a shower at the Company flat and selected the dark blue suit in his locker’s wardrobe, matching it with a new white shirt and a pair of brown Bowen shoes from England. Placing his Alec de Payns collateral in one manila envelope, he poured out the Duboscq wallet, effects and phone from another. He put on a slim gold watch and slipped a vintage-looking gold confirmation ring onto his finger.
The Metro journey to the Duboscq apartment took twelve minutes, during which he assembled Sébastien’s Nokia. He cleared the mail at the foyer of his vacant apartment above a restaurant on Rue Godot de Mauroy, and then crossed the road to the offices of AlphaPharma Consulting. He climbed the stairs and entered the tiny serviced space. There was a desk with two chairs and a sofa, and a phone and computer on the desk. Not much, but enough.
He turned on the lights and moved around. He could hear the insurance broker down the hallway yelling into the phone. He sat behind the desk, turned on the computer and leaned back in the cut-price executive chair as he tried to get into his Sébastien Duboscq mindset. He had two of the best field teams in Europe, led by Templar, and they already had Mons wired. If they burrowed deep into Raven’s private life and could confirm the environment was clean of ISI minders and overwatch, de Payns could be there in two weeks. His thoughts drifted to Operation Falcon and the disastrous interview with DGS about the three-million-euro passports. It meant Palermo was still lingering, and Frasier still hadn’t released a final report, meaning there was nothing to give Manerie. He wondered again why it had turned so bad in Sicily, pondering the mystery of the sleek, well-groomed man on the ferry. Had it really been Murad? And if so, what had dragged him out of hiding into what was essentially a field matter? Murad allegedly had ties to Osama bin Laden’s executive and he was suspected of financing sleeper cells in Paris, London, Madrid and Frankfurt. And he’d emerged from his safe haven—wherever that might be—to personally oversee Michael Lambardi on the ferry and then at the bar? Why?
Heels clicked on the parquet floor outside his office and then stopped.
‘Sébastien?’ came a woman’s voice. ‘You there, chéri?’
‘Claire! Come in,’ said de Payns, reverting to Sébastien Duboscq, the suave single guy.
The frosted-glass door swung inwards and Claire, the blonde employee who did ‘all the work’ at the insurance brokers, leaned on the doorjamb. She wore a dark pencil skirt and a loose red blouse that looked like it was meant to conceal her curves but failed.
‘Thought that was you,’ she said, pulling a soft pack of cigarettes from her waistband. ‘You been off adventuring again, Seb?’
‘If you call hard work “adventuring”. In this business the clients are everywhere,’ said de Payns, accepting a smoke. ‘I never stop travelling. You know how it is.’
‘Poof!’ she said, dismissing de Payns’ complaints. ‘Give me one week as a man, I’ll take it. Running around out there, doing whatever I want.’
‘It’s not that great,’ said de Payns, accepting her light.
‘Bullshit,’ said the blonde, as she lit her own smoke. ‘Only a man would ever complain about his own freedom.’