De Payns arrived at Indira Ghandi International at midday and took a shuttle into New Delhi, where he booked into a three-star local hotel that he’d paid for in cash in Paris. He was dressed in sneakers, jeans and a windbreaker, with a sports jacket, trousers and good shoes in his wheelie suitcase. Having checked in, he walked to the quiet greenery of the Mughal Gardens in the downtown area. He built up his Sébastien Duboscq phone and just after 2 p.m. local time called Raven and told her where he was. She sounded excited and he was relieved that her voice didn’t have any of the tightness that indicated coercion.
‘I’m just finishing up in New Delhi,’ he said. ‘Who knew that they speak Urdu and Punjabi up here? I thought it would all be Hindi, but there might be some more work for you, Anoush.’
‘Well,’ she said, ‘there are more Urdu speakers in Pakistan, but there’s still a lot in northern India.’
‘Well, thank God for your translations. I had them in my computer and printed them out to show our marketing partners.’
She was bursting to talk about their dinner date. ‘Yousef is coming over to the flat on Sunday evening. Please tell me you can make it.’
De Payns told her he’d be there. ‘I might go out to the Taxila ruins on the Saturday and see you on Sunday?’
He ate a meal in a cafe down the street from his hotel and flew out the next morning, landing in Islamabad in time for lunch. He checked into the Marriott in the north of the city; it was within a twenty-minute walk of Raven’s flat.
He got a room on the fifth floor, looking eastwards to Rawal Lake and beyond to the uplands of Pir Panjal in the distance. He checked his room for listening devices and cameras. Then—having put a needle as a bouletage in the doorjamb—he walked north-east along Aga Khan road. After two minutes of walking he came to a bus stop and waited as the traffic sped past. When he was sure he was unobserved he put a white gommette on the side of the glass covering the timetable. This was the plan de support of his infiltration. He kept walking and explored the city, passing the parliament building on his way to the Lake View Park, where he checked the time. He walked back to the bus stop exactly two hours after depositing his white gommette and searched for the response to his signal. There were four gommettes arranged around de Payns’ white one, meaning the support team was in place and had acknowledged the arrival of their chef de mission. De Payns ‘cleaned’ the plan de support by removing all the gommettes and placing a new one in the top right-hand corner. The ‘arrived safely’ stickers were some of the most important because they signalled the entire team was in place and ready to get into the operation. For de Payns it meant he could now start to live his legend. If he needed to contact his support team, he’d put a yellow gommette on the bus timetable then come back in an hour. If there was a second yellow gommette on the board, that meant he would meet Templar in the hotel’s ground-floor toilets in one hour. A white gommette with a black cross would mean there was a complication or a setback and he needed six hours to set it right, after which he’d put a plain white gommette on the board.
As part of his legend, he was now a travelling businessman with a day off, which was a chance to do his own discreet reconnaissance of the équipement de ville that he’d learned by heart, but from afar. In the lobby of the Marriott he picked through the tourism packages and found one for the ancient ruins of Taxila. He booked a 9 a.m. pick-up and asked for a 6 a.m. wake-up call. Tourist interactions were a good thing, especially as he noted a mid-thirties local man sitting in the lobby, dressed conspicuously like an American and pretending to read a newspaper. He saw the second secret policeman as soon as he emerged onto the street. He was heavier than the man in the hotel foyer and wore a black leather sports coat and elastic-sided riding boots. De Payns relaxed—he’d spent so many years doing this dance of followers and targets that it almost felt normal. De Payns was fine with these public displays. The hotel time, spent alone, was when isolation crept in. Hotel time was when he wondered about Romy and the boys but couldn’t look at any photographs of them. Company operatives were searched before leaving to ensure they carried nothing of a personal nature that could tie them to their real life.
He ambled slowly down the street, stopping to buy Pakistani knick-knacks at a souk and joking with the vendors. After thirty minutes, the follower gave up, having been put to sleep by a man with absolutely no anomalies in his behaviour. It made for terrible movie scenes, but the truth of espionage was that the ability to put a follower to sleep had saved more people than kung fu. That, and a decent three-point alignment, and nothing worth finding in your luggage.
When he felt reasonably certain the secret police had lost interest, he walked the tourniquet that he’d rehearsed back in Paris, except he did it in reverse so that when he walked it for real, the followers would not recognise his route. The tourniquet covered a specific route from Raven’s apartment to the Marriott. It would begin with a green ‘ready’ gommette on a street landmark, which de Payns would only observe and not touch. Templar would have support team agents—‘candles’—placed along the fifteen-minute walking route, and if they detected no followers, the plan de support at the end of the route would show a green gommette. If the support team detected followers, they would place a red gommette; if the followers looked intent on arresting or physically grabbing de Payns, the gommette would be red with a black cross through it. This would be the signal to activate the emergency exfiltration, also created by the support team and rehearsed by de Payns in Paris.
He walked back to the hotel using a different route to the tourniquet and ate a meal at a cafe across the road from the Marriott. His phone rang and he picked up. This was his Duboscq phone, only used to contact Raven, never his support team.
‘Hi, Anoush,’ he said, smiling as he answered.
‘Yousef likes strong, traditional cooking,’ she said, with a hint of mischief. ‘Do you mind a strong taste?’
‘Okay,’ said de Payns, going along with the joke. ‘I guess I need to arrive with a fire extinguisher for my mouth.’
She shrieked with laughter. ‘We’re Pakistanis, not Tamils! Don’t worry, it will not burn. I promise.’
‘Sure,’ he said. ‘As long as there’s something to wash it down with.’
‘I’ve got something very nice cooling down as we speak.’
When de Payns walked into the Marriott, a new secret policeman was sitting in the same chair as the previous follower. De Payns smiled at him as he walked past and went straight up to his room. The bouletage was on the ground and the three-point alignment was way out. He was expecting this. A heavily guarded bioweapons scientist was going to meet with his sister for dinner, along with her mysterious French friend. At the very least the ISI would have a look at him, search his room and his bags and see where he went during the day. De Payns knew this and knew that his job was to hypnotise them with banality; almost annoy them with how boring he was. It was about regulating movements and gait, limiting his gaze to innocent tourism, and never letting a follower see that he had tradecraft.