In the Cercottes training they’d been taught to regulate their breathing when fear made the breaths shallow. If you let fear take over your physical self, oxygen in the brain dropped and decision-making capacity reduced. They’d undergone similar simulations in the air force, to show the pilot trainees what happened to cognitive function when the brain was deprived of oxygen. The lower the oxygen intake, the worse they’d become at breaking down a pistol or doing basic multiplication.
De Payns kept that in mind, counting steps and breathing deep through his nose as he descended the stairs. He had to make good decisions over the next half-hour—good, professional decisions. Romy and the boys belonged to another life at this moment. Behind him he could detect at least one of the bodyguards, following him but not close enough to attack. A decent backhand fist to a point just below the kneecap might give him enough time to dispossess the bodyguard of his weapon. But while keeping himself alert to the possibility of violence, he wasn’t going to start a fight. He was going to do what he had been taught—play it out, let the followers follow and never let an adversary see that you’re trained.
He opened the lobby door at thirty-eight steps. The second bodyguard was visible in the reflection of the glass as he pulled back on the handle. The minder wasn’t holding a gun, but his hands were held in such a way that the gun would be very close.
He pushed onto the street and found the black S-Class Mercedes parked directly in front of the building, in a no parking zone. He knew this car well. Behind the car was the LandCruiser and leaning on it were two ISI thugs, one of them carrying an MP5 machine pistol over his shoulder on a black strap.
The thugs stood up straight and watched de Payns as he exited the building. Behind him, the second bodyguard said something to his colleagues, and across the road, the orange glow of a cigarette flipped through the air and another bodyguard—this one carrying a shortened assault rifle—stepped away from a lamppost and joined the watching.
De Payns nodded to them as he passed the LandCruiser and started his long walk back to the hotel. It was a moderately populated street, just north of the main CBD and west of the diplomatic enclave. He realised the locals were taking one look at the LandCruiser parked beside the Mercedes before electing to walk on the opposite side of the street.
His job was to follow the tourniquet, giving his team—his candles—a chance to find his followers and give him their verdict on the plan de support final. If he reached the advertising on the bus stop and there was a red sticker with a cross drawn through it, de Payns was to move towards the hotel as if nothing was wrong. This was the critical part—there would be no rupture through the established passage obligé, no car chases. There’d be no bang-bang, as the Company referred to the use of firearms. If he was being followed, he would have to do one of the most difficult things an OT could be asked to do. He’d have to walk with the mannerisms of a man who was not stressed, not scared and who was not taking every step as if a van was about to stop beside him and scoop him up. He would have to behave as if everything was fine, as if he wasn’t in Islamabad and the head of the bioweapons program had not all-but accused him of being a spy. The followers would have to be put to sleep.
He walked, taking a pack of smokes out of his windbreaker and lighting one. He consciously kept any preparedness out of his step; he knew that a certain stride was what Templar usually clocked when he was picking those in the game out of a crowd. That and their footwear.
At the first main junction, he turned right at the pedestrian lights and was now walking at ninety degrees to the road that Raven’s flat was on. It was 6.27 p.m. local time as de Payns passed a corner cafe on the other side of the road with a noticeboard outside—the starting plan de support—and saw the green gommette. The tourniquet was ready to be played, which meant Templar and the team were in place and ready. It calmed him a bit.
He kept walking slow and easy, while his heart flipped like a pancake. He readied to cross the road to go west again on the cross street, glancing left as he did to see if there was oncoming traffic. He was quite sure he saw a green van pull into a no parking zone eighty metres back the way he’d come. He had to stop looking for things that weren’t there, he told himself.
He crossed the road, looking around like a tourist, willing the walk to be over and to see a green sticker on the bus stop hoarding. As he reached the other side of the road, he walked past a double-fronted store with hundreds of clothes racks, being picked over by seemingly half the women of Islamabad. Beside it was a cafe—this was the start of the tourniquet, and if de Payns was running it he’d have put a candle in that cafe to see who was following around the corner. But he didn’t look for his team. He walked past, flicking his smoke in the gutter, and shoved both hands into his jacket pockets. He wrapped his hands around the pieces of Nokia, not wanting to reassemble it in public for fear of being provocative.
This leg was two blocks. Two teenagers whooshed past him on skateboards and a family with a gaggle of loud and unhappy kids spilled out of a restaurant, the father using the universal body language of shut up and get in the car.
He got to the end of the final leg and stopped to cross on a traffic light. The first candle would now be watching him at this turn, while candle number two was heading for the plan de support, waiting for a radio instruction from Templar about which sticker to place on the bus stop siding. In reality, a good support team knew if their agent was being followed at the first candle. The next two were confirmation and double-confirmation. A well-managed tourniquet didn’t just establish surveillance, it gave the candles a chance to get a sense of the followers’ tactics and numbers.
He waited for the pedestrian light to turn green, his throat dry as he tried to swallow. It was a cool evening in Pakistan’s capital, but the back of his neck felt clammy. The light went green and he crossed, entering a less populated side street that curved slightly. The bus stop was on the other side of the road. He walked to the kerb and looked to his right and left. A van turned into the street and parked. He waited for a gap in the traffic, crossed the road and walked along the pavement, dodging the pedestrians. The bus stop loomed. Unlike European bus stop advertising, this one had no back-lighting. He created a side-step situation with a woman coming the other way, and ended up directly beside the plan de support. He looked down briefly, hoping for a green sticker.
But it was red, with a cross.