De Payns was not supposed to have a CZ 9mm from the Company at his residence, and Briffaut had asked him to return it. After lunch, de Payns descended to the armoury and small gun range in the bowels of the Bunker, where Zac often had interesting videos playing on his TV and all the best gossip in the building.
‘Please sign it in,’ said de Payns, passing over the handgun. ‘It’s about two years overdue.’
Zac brought out his Tupperware box of macarons and de Payns took a raspberry one. There was a handgun viced in place on Zac’s workbench, lights focused on it.
‘What are you working on?’ asked de Payns, nodding at the gun.
‘Blanks. They wreck a weapon. Put too many of those rounds through and I have to break them down, rebuild them. They go through thousands at Cercottes.’
‘Blanks?’ echoed de Payns, chewing on the biscuit. ‘Hadn’t really thought about it.’
‘Well most people think there’s nothing in them, hence blanks,’ said Zac. ‘But there’s still a charge in the round. It has gunpowder and what have you, but instead of a bullet, there’s paper wadding. Quality weapons don’t like to shoot paper.’
‘So it’s not really a blank at all?’ asked de Payns.
‘No, it’s more like a fraud. Everything looks normal on this side’—he held a flat hand to his right—‘but what comes out over here isn’t what you thought you put in.’
De Payns stood, his mind spinning. ‘Thanks Zac.’
The team returned to the SCIF at 1 p.m. and de Payns focused on Ackermann. ‘Josef, you said that a large-scale attack with weaponised clostridium would require too much of the material to be added to a city water supply, and there are too many filters and treatments at a water plant?’
‘Yes, around seven stages. Water engineering is pretty advanced.’
‘What’s the final stage?’
Josef Ackermann rolled forward and looked at his files. ‘It’s one of the chemical treatments. Chlorine or, in the new plants, chloramine.’
‘How do they dispense the chlorine?’
Ackermann held up a colour brochure showing large blue plastic barrels. ‘They’re like a cartridge that slots into the pipe at the very end of the process,’ said Ackermann. ‘The water is treated by the chlorine, and when it passes out the other side the bugs that weren’t killed by the previous six stages are now dead.’
De Payns thought about what Zac had said about blanks being better described as frauds. ‘What if there’s no chlorine in the canisters?’
Ackermann seemed confused. ‘Well, the water wouldn’t have that final treatment.’
‘Okay,’ said de Payns. ‘What further treatment is there after the chlorine?’
‘None,’ said Ackermann. ‘Unless you have a filter under your kitchen sink.’
‘Okay—and this is just a theory—what would happen if you took the chlorine out of the canisters and filled them with weaponised clostridium?’
Marie Lafont screwed up her face. ‘That’s just gross.’
Ackermann gulped.
Briffaut turned to Shrek. ‘Those samples you brought back from Palermo? The clostridium was on chlorine.’
‘Yes, it was,’ said Shrek, eyes focusing.
‘What if they were bringing in genuine water treatment canisters that were filled with chlorine, then emptying them and refilling them with the clostridium?’
‘That would mean water treatment canisters arriving at Porto di Palermo, having their contents swapped, and leaving from there as well,’ said Briffaut. ‘Hand it to the DR. They can do this quicker than anyone. Chlorine is a reportable substance. Let’s find out who was bringing it in and shipping it out.’
Marie Lafont picked up one of the conference phones in the middle of the table, and turned away.
The first response came back from the Palermo Port Authority twenty-three minutes later. Shrek took the call from DR on speaker phone—a company called Rotterdam Associates had applied to import fourteen containers of Scandland water filters from Australia, with a combined weight of two hundred and fifty tonnes of chlorine. The name on the authorisation form was Gina Bolaro. The DR woman cited the local address as 1625 Via Fiammetta.
‘I know it,’ said Shrek. ‘That’s the address for Palermo Commercial Realty—it’s David Lambardi’s firm, the managing agency for the warehouse.’
‘When did this company export the containers out of Palermo?’ asked Shrek.
‘July twenty-eight,’ the woman replied. ‘Fourteen containers, on a ship called Baltic Lady. The freight forwarders were Global Transit Group.’
The team looked at one another.
‘Okay,’ said Shrek. ‘Where was the ship going?’
The woman paused then said, ‘Alexandria Port—Egypt.’
Briffaut had the cooperation of the Italian security services but the paperwork for the chlorine consignment departing the country was accurate and there were no flags.
‘What’s in Egypt?’ asked Briffaut. ‘Why are they shipping there? Is this a Shia–Sunni thing?’
The DR woman then said the consignment had been unloaded from Baltic Lady on the same day it docked.
‘Thanks, keep us updated,’ said Briffaut, ending the call.
He looked around at his team and they got back to Palermo. They quickly established that Gina Bolaro was a false ID, but before they could pursue it further the phone rang.
Lafont picked up. ‘DR again,’ she said, putting the call on speaker.
‘New developments,’ said their woman from DR. ‘Those containers were unloaded in Alexandria and cleared into bond, and then they were loaded again via a new freight forwarder. We only picked it up because Alexandria has RFID readers and our person down there ran a check.’
Briffaut swore softly. ‘Which ship did they go onto?’
‘That’s the thing,’ she said. ‘They went straight back onto Baltic Lady.’
‘Where was it heading?’ asked de Payns.
‘Cadiz and Le Havre,’ she said. ‘It arrived at Le Havre two weeks ago.’
While the arrival of the containers in France was sufficiently distant, that there was nothing to search or seize. They enlisted French customs at Le Havre, who confirmed importation of chlorine water filters from Alexandria via Cadiz on the dates supplied. The containers had been held in bond for fourteen hours at a global freight forwarding operation called Atlas-HK, and when they checked with Atlas the forwarder confirmed that the fourteen containers had been released by a Gina Bolaro and trained to Reims. They could confirm that they were white Hapag-Lloyd twenty-foot containers. From there, the trail became meaningless, with fake names, fake paperwork and fake trucking companies. The containers had already been moved from the Reims’ container hub, where they’d probably been broken down and rebirthed as other cargos, and they could now be anywhere in France or elsewhere in Europe.
There was a knock at the SCIF door, and Anthony Frasier walked in. ‘We’ve got Valley downstairs.’
They descended into the basement of the old fort, into an area where the detention centre occupied a small space not taken up by the armoury, engineers’ workshops and gym. The team walked into a room with nine chairs all facing a window—Jim Valley was on the other side of the glass, cuffed to a steel loop on the table in front of him.
Briffaut inserted a micro earpiece and pointed to de Payns. ‘Alec and I will do the interview. I need the rest of you fact-checking his bullshit and feeding it to me, okay?’
Valley’s face was a mess—fat lip, swollen eye socket, tape and bandage holding his left ear to his blood-encrusted head. The soldier looked up as Briffaut and de Payns walked in and sat down. ‘For the record, Templar hit me from behind. I did pretty well, considering.’
‘I don’t have a deal for you,’ said Briffaut straight up. ‘You know how the Company works—traitors are traitors.’
Valley nodded. ‘Sure, I know. But I served—I was following the orders of my commanding officer.’
Briffaut nodded. He wasn’t going to argue the point.
‘Anyone have a smoke?’ asked Valley.
Briffaut lit one and handed it to him. ‘No deals, but the small traitor who helps us grab the big traitor? That could only be a good thing.’
Valley scoffed, dragged on his smoke. ‘Actually, I’m fucked. Let’s get on with it.’
‘You were in deep with Manerie,’ said Briffaut.
‘Eventually, yes,’ said Valley.
‘Eventually?’
‘I was driving for him, riding shotgun, for a couple of years.’
‘Can you remember how that started?’
‘I served in a unit he commanded in Congo, back in the day.’
‘He brought you into the Company?’
‘Yeah, he did. I started with recon and support team work. But I knew Manerie wanted me in DGS. When the whole Murad bullshit started, that’s when I came into this stupid shit.’
‘What’s the Murad bullshit?’ asked Briffaut, lighting his own cigarette.
Valley stared at Briffaut and took a deep breath, like a man with some very big regrets. ‘There was a Pakistani rocket engineer who was apparently working for us. Manerie sold him out to a guy called Murad—sort of ISI, but also private.’
‘Manerie told you this?’
‘Manerie drinks,’ said Valley. ‘He’s not happy with some of his choices.’
‘So why were you brought in?’
‘Murad turned Manerie with money, but as soon as that engineer was blown, Murad started blackmailing Manerie—or at least telling him his career could be over.’
‘How did that go down?’
Valley smirked. ‘So, Manerie muscles up with me and starts making it clear that we’d worked dark in Africa and we weren’t to be fucked with. It became a bit macho.’
‘Macho?’ echoed de Payns. ‘You kidnapped my wife and kids. Nice work, tough guy.’
Valley looked at his smoke, nodding slowly. ‘Not my finest hour. I was telling the boys I was going to wrap it up and we were all going home. And then Hurricane Templar struck. I was going to drive them home, I swear. But that’s no excuse.’
Briffaut leaped in. ‘Can we be clear? Murad is ISI?’
Valley nodded. ‘He contracts to them. He created a group called Sayef Albar. He’s bad news.’
Briffaut touched his earpiece. ‘Do you know Murad’s name?’
‘Murad is a pseudo, as far as I can tell,’ said Valley. ‘I never met him, only saw him from a distance. He doesn’t like to be looked at.’
‘Where did Manerie do meetings with him?’
‘Never in Pakistan. A few meetings were in France, Spain, Italy, but mainly they talked on démarqué phones. Manerie once told me that Murad hides in plain sight. He has a firm in a European city. Don’t ask me which one.’
‘What’s Murad planning?’
Valley shrugged. ‘Do I look like the mastermind?’
‘Let me run through some names, tell me what you know—Yousef Bijar.’
‘Never heard of it.’
‘Anoush al-Kashi.
‘Blank.’
‘Michael Lambardi.’
‘Lambardi?’ Valley laughed. ‘Shit, he was a dumb bastard. Murad goes to contact Lambardi on the ferry and fucking Aguilar is staring straight at him. That got the feathers flying.’
De Payns couldn’t help himself. ‘Lambardi died for that.’
Valley sneered. ‘Lambardi was trying to make three million euros for trafficking terrorists with real French passports. Sorry for the hurt feelings.’
‘You know they tried to kill Aguilar that night?’ asked Briffaut.
‘I heard that later. Shrek came up with some fancy pen-work.’
‘Okay, David Lambardi,’ said Briffaut.
‘Owns a real estate firm in Palermo—Palermo Commercial Realty. He’s a useful idiot.’
‘Useful to whom?’
‘Murad ran his European logistics out of the firm’s systems, I believe. Some payments were made out of there, too. Not the big ones, but the day-to-day running of Sayef Albar.’
‘How did he do that?’
‘He had a very smart woman working there …’
Briffaut leaned in as Valley stumbled. ‘Who’s the woman, Jim?’
Valley went blank. They’d touched a nerve.
‘She close to you?’
‘She was,’ said Valley, sighing. ‘Her real name’s Heidi Winnen. We sort of … you know?’
‘What was her role?’
‘They always had things coming in and going out. People had to be paid, all the paperwork needed an address. I don’t know the details, but she ran all of that.’
De Payns came in, ‘Winnen’s her real name? What other names did she use?’
‘She goes by Gina Bolaro,’ said Valley. ‘I actually really liked her, you know?’
They returned to the SCIF and within eight minutes Marie Lafont had a bio on Heidi Winnen, and a picture that she projected onto the SCIF’s screen from her laptop. ‘She’s a chemical engineer, with a company called Rotterdam Associates. At university she had a boyfriend called Nasim ul-Huq, a Pakistani science student who was heavily involved in PLO politics.’
‘Heidi was radicalised?’ asked Briffaut.
‘Doesn’t say,’ said Lafont. ‘She’s worked all over the world in major water infrastructure engineering and now she seems to be in charge of Rotterdam’s pitch into water utilities in France, Germany and Spain. The best part? Nasim ul-Huq—her boyfriend from university—is the owner of Rotterdam Associates. It’s in Paris.’
‘Is Nasim also known as Murad?’
‘We’re getting a photo.’
De Payns asked, ‘What is Rotterdam selling?’
‘They install new chemical water filters. It’s called chloramine disinfection.’
‘Chloramine? Not chlorine?’
Lafont read out what was in front of her. ‘It says chlorine and ammonia, the latest way to ensure clean water. It’s the final part of the water treatment process. There’s a link here to a media release. They’re installing the biggest system in Europe this week.’
‘Where’s the installation?’ asked de Payns.
‘Saint-Cloud,’ said Lafont.
‘Saint-Cloud treatment plant? That’s in Paris,’ said de Payns.
Frasier reached for the landline and punched the DGSI number.
‘Claude,’ he barked. ‘That shit I briefed you on? It’s Saint-Cloud—they’re targeting Saint-Cloud.’ There was a pause. ‘Yes, the fucking Paris water supply!’ Another pause. ‘Okay. Stay on the line.’
Frasier hit mute and looked around. ‘Malle wants me to contact Saint-Cloud—he’ll join the call. Someone get me the CEO.’
Saint-Cloud was one of six drinking-water plants owned by the City of Paris and its water company, Eau de Paris. It drew water from springs as far afield as Normandy and Burgundy, continuing a tradition of transporting water into the city by aqueduct that had begun a little more than four hundred years earlier, under the Medicis.
Lafont scrolled through her phone and called a number at the DGSE, and then leaned over, ‘hung’ the Malle call, and dialled in another number. They got the head of operations—Jean-Pierre Thorens—after waiting seven minutes, and explained the situation.
‘Claude Malle, DGSI, and Anthony Frasier, from the government,’ said Malle to Thorens, who wasn’t concerned.
‘Our infrastructure security exceeds the EU requirements and the Americans even tour here to see what we do,’ he said haughtily. ‘We are Paris’s water supply. It’s serious infrastructure with a national security designation, Monsieur Frasier.’
‘I don’t doubt it,’ said Briffaut, jumping in. ‘It’s just there could be a saboteur in the engineering firm Rotterdam Associates. They’re installing new chloramine filters this week?’
‘Today, actually,’ said Thorens.
‘Okay. You don’t know me, Monsieur Thorens, but I work for the government. My name is Dominic,’ he said. ‘I’ll bet you there’s a team of technicians and engineers listed from Rotterdam Associates, and there is one manager whose name is Heidi Winnen.’
De Payns heard a tapping on a keyboard. ‘That is the case, but so what? She probably works for the company—you could have got that name from their website.’
‘She’s a saboteur,’ Briffaut insisted.
Thorens pushed back. ‘I don’t think you understand. This is a secured facility. For any contractor to have access to our operations area, the company must first provide their name, and the contractors themselves have to produce their passports when they arrive. It’s a totally locked-down area.’
‘Passports?’ echoed Briffaut.
‘Yes, if the name doesn’t match the passport, they don’t enter,’ said Thorens. ‘We only accept French nationals in the security area.’
‘How many?’ asked Briffaut.
‘How many Rotterdam contractors?’ replied Thorens.
‘Yes.’
The keyboard clattered and Thorens said, ‘Seven. I can read them out if you’d like—Margaret Vernier, Nasim ul-Huq, Heidi Winnen, David Keller, Clement Vinier, Pierre Bastiat and Antonie Aguirre.’
The DGSE team swapped looks, eyes wide. Five of the names used by Rotterdam Associates were fictive IDs used by the Y Division.
When the five passports didn’t materialise in Palermo, had Murad’s gang simply turned to their contact in the DGS? What had Manerie done?
Briffaut broke the shocked silence. ‘I want you to behave normally, Monsieur Thorens, but delay the contractors. We’ll be there soon.’
‘What is going on?’ asked Thorens. ‘Is this a prank?’
Claude Malle from the DGSI came on the conference call and cleared his throat. ‘Monsieur Thorens, please be advised that all the information in this conversation is classified top secret and is protected information under French law.’
Thorens agreed to the terms.
‘Have you heard of Clostridium perfringens?’ asked Malle.
‘It’s a bacterium, a nasty one, that causes …’
‘Gas gangrene,’ said Malle.
Thorens stammered slightly. ‘Well that can’t be allowed in our system. Saint-Cloud serves Paris.’
‘I understand,’ said Malle. ‘We believe these people have put weaponised Clostridium perfringens inside the final filtration canisters in place of the chloramine. Those canisters are what they’re installing at Saint-Cloud, yes?’
The man on the other end paused. ‘Yes, and that would be devastating.’
‘Okay,’ Briffaut interjected, ‘don’t frighten or approach these people. I know you have a job to do, but stand back from it until the police get there.’