Before heading to his 9.30 a.m. meeting, De Payns made breakfast for the boys and watched SpongeBob with them. They talked about girls and bullies as they made the waffles—‘Papa’s way’ with extra sugar and cinnamon—and de Payns lowered his voice when Patrick wanted to know when he could play rugby.
‘Why rugby?’ he asked, not wanting Romy to hear the conversation—she hated rugby. ‘I thought you liked soccer?’
‘You played rugby,’ said Patrick. ‘I saw your school photos.’
‘Okay, we’ll ask your mother,’ said de Payns, as he poured maple syrup.
‘I already did,’ said Patrick.
‘And?’ asked de Payns.
Patrick smiled, ‘She said never. You’ll have to tell her, Papa.’
‘Oh, I have to tell her?’ replied de Payns, laughing. ‘How do you think that will turn out?’
‘Maybe ask her nicely?’ suggested Oliver, eyes wide.
By the time they’d watched two SpongeBob episodes, de Payns didn’t want to move. In the first week of September, Patrick would be back at school and Oliver would be starting his first year. He remembered when Oliver couldn’t talk; now he’d be learning to read and write. He was conscious of the years racing by, not purely in age but in family time. While he got lost in his latest subterfuge and manipulation, his sons did their karate and played football and hung out watching SpongeBob Square Pants—proud of the fact they could follow it in English. He thought about his family and wished he could walk on a higher moral ground. In his world, family was leverage; family was a weak point to be exploited, and given that most rational people would do anything to spare their families, kids were part of the game. He’d avoided facing up to it until the night he’d returned from Palermo and Romy had asked: That’s what you do to people? Get to their families?
Yes, he thought, as he sipped on his coffee in front of the cartoons. That’s what I do.
He kissed the boys, suggested they let their mother have a lie-in, and slipped out of the door just before eight-thirty.
They sat in Dominic Briffaut’s office, de Payns and Mattieu Garrat briefing the head of Y Division on why they felt the operational environment was ready to be upgraded to contact. The three-week environment phase, run by Templar, had not disclosed anything special about Raven apart from the fact that in emails and phone calls she criticised her husband a lot, and she wished for more freedom. The phone calls to the mystery man at the MERC had been monitored and played back for the cryptographers at the Cat, who couldn’t find a code in the dull conversations about shopping, traffic and school lunches. It was not unusual in countries such as Pakistan and Iran for classified government workers to train their family and friends never to ask about their work or refer to it. So Raven wasn’t asking, and the person of interest at the MERC wasn’t telling. Briffaut had a file of the transcripts between Raven and the POI, and he flipped to a random page which contained the conversation:
POI: How are you?
RAVEN: Good.
POI: How are the kids?
RAVEN: Happy.
POI: How is the weather?
RAVEN: Fine.
POI: How is work?
RAVEN: Busy.
Briffaut sighed. ‘This is it?’
De Payns nodded. ‘The conversations are so banal that we should at least consider the possibility that Raven is trained.’
Briffaut shrugged at that possibility. In the intel game you also had to accept that people conducted uninspiring communications.
They went through the photographic surveillance, which demonstrated Raven’s ego, a potential MICE leverage. She had a pretty face and a voluptuous body. In one of the shots, she wore silky parachute pants and a tight bodice that was less modest than a typical Pakistani woman would wear.
‘One of Templar’s female team-members followed Raven to a Latin club,’ said de Payns. ‘She reported that the dance leader at the club was a good-looking man in a sleazy sort of way. It’s in the reports section.’
Briffaut made a face as he scanned the photographs. ‘We picking up any counter-measures?’
‘We’ve found nothing,’ said de Payns. ‘The environment is clean.’
Garrat directed the meeting to emails Raven had exchanged with other female Middle Eastern migrants living in Europe. In them, she complained about wanting to get away from Fadi—the absent husband—whom she accused of controlling her and becoming radicalised.
Briffaut shut the ring-binder file, pushed it back towards Garrat. Then he turned to de Payns. ‘If we go to contact, do you have a plan for Raven?’
‘I know how to approach her,’ said de Payns.
Briffaut nodded, his mind already shifting to something else. ‘It’s a yes from me. I’ll take it to Frasier. You’ll know by tonight.’