The Thalys train got into Gare du Nord just before 11 a.m. and de Payns walked with the commuters through the famous vaulted concourses. He was mercifully free of a hangover, a fate he wouldn’t guarantee for Raven. She was sloshed by the time he loaded her into a cab and dropped her at her apartment. She was too drunk to make it to the door so he escorted her in and paid off the babysitter.
He had a quick look for followers in the Gare du Nord then ducked down the escalators to the Metro platforms and waited seven minutes for a train south to the Gare d’Austerlitz. As he took his seat in the lightly populated car, his Sébastien Duboscq phone trilled. This was the part of the journey where he’d normally break down the phone in preparation for a change of ID at the safe house. It was Raven.
‘Anoush,’ he said. ‘You’re up early.’
She groaned the groan of a person who’d had one drink too many. ‘Don’t laugh at me. Oh, and thanks for dealing with the babysitter.’
‘No problem,’ said de Payns. ‘You wanted that sofa for a bed.’
They made small talk for a few minutes, and then her tone changed. ‘Some of the things I told you last night, I … I really shouldn’t have.’
‘Don’t worry about that,’ he said. ‘I promised you it wouldn’t go further than me—and I may change jobs shortly, so it’s not of any importance to me. What is important to me is that you gave me your trust, and I’m very touched. Go back to bed and see you in a week.’
He could hear her chewing her lip. ‘Really?’
‘I’m trying to remember exactly what you told me,’ said de Payns, jollying her along. ‘Now you have me all intrigued.’
‘Maybe I’m overreacting,’ she said. ‘I just really shouldn’t talk about him, and now you’ll have to shut up about it.’
‘I understand,’ said de Payns, laughing. ‘Are you okay?’
‘I’m fine, really. But please, forget about last night?’
‘Anoush …’
‘Let’s meet again next week when you’re in Mons. But no mention of this in emails, okay?’
De Payns could almost feel the fear down the line.
She finished the call, and he broke down the phone as they closed on Austerlitz.
He spent most of the day writing his report. His night with Raven was a major breakthrough—the person of interest at the MERC was Anoush’s brother, a former professor in bacterial engineering named Dr Yousef Bijar. De Payns was happy to have the information, but he believed he was not the man to carry the operation further. The next step would involve getting closer to her family and she was now scared of her relationship with de Payns—or scared of the consequences of their association for Sébastien Duboscq, at least. If she was scared of what her brother or the ISI could do to her new friend, she could easily clam up and not allow any further incursions into her life or family.
He’d called ahead and notified Briffaut, Garrat and Lafont that he was ready to brief them. He had twenty minutes before the meeting started, so he grabbed a large black coffee and headed out into the morning sun, where he lit a smoke and walked the lawns around the old fort in search of a park bench where he could relax and stretch his legs. The end of summer was a time to savour the warmth before the cold winds of autumn started. He felt tired but not exhausted, a state that affected his brain more than his body. But he focused on the events of the night before and Raven’s call to him that morning. She was an abandoned woman, in a foreign country, quite vulnerable and expected to shut up about her brother, while talking to him once a week. He knew from Poles and East Germans that the true victory of the secret police was imposing self-censorship. He sucked on the smoke and sipped at the coffee. He wondered about Romy, Patrick and Oliver. What danger was he bringing into their lives on a daily basis? If his family knew who and what he was, would they live their lives in a similar state of fear?
He saw Briffaut exit the double doors down by the gym entrance and walk towards him holding his own coffee mug. Dominic Briffaut was fifteen years de Payns’ senior, but he still walked strong.
‘One of those for me?’ asked Briffaut, sitting on the bench. ‘Saw you with that damned smoke and suddenly I needed one.’
De Payns handed them over, and when he got the pack back he lit another for himself.
‘Saw your report on Raven,’ said Briffaut, sucking on the cigarette. ‘Nice work. How do you want to do it? Work Raven to contact Bijar? Or go to Islamabad and push for a contact directly on Bijar?’
‘It has to be through Raven,’ said de Payns. ‘And it has to be in Islamabad; he won’t leave that city. But I don’t know if I’m the one to do it.’
Briffaut dragged on his smoke and regarded de Payns. ‘That’s not what Frasier wants to hear right now. He thinks there’s some credible good news for the President.’
De Payns agreed. ‘I’m not terminating the operation, but I’m probably not the person to take the contact where it might have to go.’
‘Gone far enough with her?’
‘Something like that,’ said de Payns. ‘She’s shitting herself about saying too much last night.’
‘She’s worried about your welfare?’
De Payns nodded. ‘I’ve seen this before. She’s scared that her association with her brother is a negative for me. There’s panic about divulging too much.’
‘Okay,’ said Briffaut. ‘And then she stops communicating because she doesn’t want you running a mile from her?’
‘That’s a real possibility.’
‘Why?’ Briffaut chuckled. ‘Because she’s got a crush on you?’
‘Don’t make fun of me.’
‘You going to tell Marie this?’ asked Briffaut, shaking his head. ‘She’s a hard thing.’
De Payns took them through his report and made his case early.
‘The relationship is getting very close,’ he said. ‘Too close. It could wreck any chance of a contact on Bijar.’
‘We got a pseudo for Bijar?’ asked Briffaut.
‘Timberwolf okay with everyone?’ asked Lafont, to nods. De Payns could see her tensing up, wanting to argue with him. ‘Can I ask you, what is too close?’
Briffaut leaped in. ‘If a target says too much, they’ll sometimes back off because they want to keep the frisson the way it was. We might be in that position.’
Marie Lafont gave a wry smile. ‘So, Alec, how close?’
‘Drinking together, laughs, friendship,’ he said.
‘Did you fuck her?’ asked Lafont.
Garrat and Lafont started laughing and de Payns joked along rather than take offence. ‘No, I haven’t done that.’
Garrat said to Lafont, ‘I told you so.’
‘Come on, people, cut it out,’ growled Briffaut.
‘Okay, okay,’ said Lafont. ‘I’d like to make the point that too close generally means you’ve fucked, and now the relationship has changed, become complicated, and it might be harder to manipulate the target because the leverage is gone.’
‘Then I haven’t got too close, and perhaps I maintain some leverage?’ asked de Payns, regretting it as he said it. Female agents were regularly expected to include sex in a contact.
‘How nice for you,’ said Lafont sarcastically.
‘The aim of Alamut is to find a human access to the MERC,’ said de Payns. ‘We’re doing that through Raven, but if Raven is worried about her admissions to me, I don’t think a sexual relationship is going to help us.’
‘I’ll do it,’ said Garrat.
There was a pause for two seconds and then the meeting broke into laughter. It got so bad that Briffaut had to thump his own chest against his smoker’s cough, even as Garrat blushed with embarrassment.
‘What’s wrong?’ he asked, clearly not enjoying the ridicule. ‘I’m divorced, it’s okay.’
When the laughter had stopped, Lafont turned to Garrat. ‘You’ve seen her horny emails, right, Mattieu?’
He nodded. ‘Sure.’
‘Those emails were about that,’ she said, pointing at de Payns.
Lafont turned back to de Payns. ‘Nice try, Aguilar. The sex part is optional, but you’re not bailing out of this contact. We’re almost there.’
De Payns looked to Briffaut, who shrugged. ‘Like she said, mon pote. Maybe read those emails again?’