Shrek stood back from Briffaut’s door, and muttered a quick hello to Aguilar as his friend left the boss’s office.
‘Come in, Shrek,’ the boss called.
Shrek shut the door behind him and the head of Y Division waved him to a seat.
‘What I’m about to tell you doesn’t leave this room, understand?’ ordered Briffaut. ‘At least, not before Monday.’
Shrek nodded. ‘Got it.’
‘You know Paul Degarde?’
‘From the Russian desk? Sure, but not well.’
‘Two days ago he had a nasty surprise, after returning from a foreign trip.’
Shrek sat up. ‘In Paris?’
‘Yep,’ said Briffaut, balling his big fists on the desk. ‘His wife and daughter were pretty shaken up, but Degarde didn’t make it.’
‘Fuck,’ said Shrek, before he could stop himself.
‘That was my reaction. DGS have taken the wife and child out of harm’s way.’
‘What happened?’ asked Shrek.
‘DGS checked his last text messages, and he was well clear after seeing his source and leaving the country.’
Shrek’s mind whirled: OTs were constantly reminded to be especially careful when they landed back in Paris—back from the Moon. That’s when they were at their most vulnerable: tired from the mission and wanting to get home. That’s when they were tempted to take shortcuts, which was why the importance of being clean for the ‘last mile’ was hammered into them so forcefully.
Briffaut continued. ‘He was clean into Charles de Gaulle, but he took a taxi straight home from the airport.’
Shrek almost felt sick. ‘Quel con, what an idiot!’
‘It’s done now. Our job is to work back and find who did this. I want you to go see Degarde’s wife, make her talk. We need her to spit out all her memories.’
‘DGS are finished?’ asked Shrek, aware that the Company’s internal affairs officers sealed off such scenarios as if the entire organisation was leaky.
‘Not officially, but I’ll get you a window of a couple of hours, and you have my authority to use all your skills.’
Shrek nodded. He was known for an interview style that got results without the need for raised voices or threats. A lot of manipulation, yes, but no threats.
‘And just so you know, the source Degarde was handling was Lotus. You see what I mean?’
‘I see,’ said Shrek. In other words, Paul Degarde had probably dragged a bunch of Russians into Paris.
‘I’ll give you the address on Monday,’ said Briffaut.
Briffaut hit his intercom and was talking to Margot as Shrek left.
■
De Payns flipped through the file Briffaut had given him; the picture of Johnny must have been at least twenty years old. He wondered why the Corsican had been put to sleep for a decade and whether it had to do with his reliability. He found Johnny’s contact phone number and the ‘wake up’ authentication script in the back of the thin file. Smiling at the old-school script, which was reminiscent of the clandestine liaison tools they were taught at Cercottes, the DGSE training facility outside of Orléans, he picked up the phone and dialled.
A voice answered after two rings; a gravelly male voice, wheezy like the Godfather’s. With authentic Corsican manners the voice simply said, ‘Yes?’
‘Can I rent a house in the countryside, behind Nice?’ asked de Payns.
‘The holidays are over, so it’s a good time right now,’ the Corsican replied without hesitation. ‘Tell me what you need.’
‘I need fresh air,’ said de Payns.
‘Let’s meet on Monday at the Hotel de Paris—the Bar Américain, six p.m.’
De Payns agreed and put down the phone. The entire interaction had taken twenty seconds, and at the end of it he had a meeting with Johnny, and he knew the man was a professional.
■
It was mid-afternoon when de Payns reached the ‘safe house’, which in the Company was called an OCP, or Operational Clandestine Premises. It was located in an anonymous building in the eleventh arrondissement. He entered the week’s numerical code into the number pad at the building’s portico and pushed through the door as the bolts slid back. He now stood in an internal antechamber, with a closed security door in front of him, and listened to the security bolts slide home in the door behind him. He waited for thirty seconds then, when the green light was illuminated on the number pad for the next door, he input the DGSE’s daily code and entered. He wanted to make this quick. With his reports on Geneva written, he was able to leave work early, and now he had a good shot at making it home for dinner with Romy and his sons, six-year-old Oliver and eight-year-old Patrick. It could be a struggle to make time for his family, while at the same time having to put them in a sealed compartment when he was operational. He intended to make the most of these few precious hours he had stolen before he had to leave for Monaco and Genoa.
He walked past one bedroom—made up for agents on the move—and glanced into another room consisting of servers and a desk with a computer. He continued on through the kitchen to his locker, where he located a manila envelope labelled Benoît Droulez. Taking off his watch and emptying his pockets of wallet and phone, de Payns stripped himself of his false identity and placed the items in the envelope. He changed his brown leather loafers for a pair of Asics trainers and switched his blue sports coat for a windbreaker. Then he opened the envelope labelled Home. He put on his own watch, checked his wallet and put his phone in his jeans pocket. Then he left via the secret rear door, emerging in a service lane, and headed for the Metro.
It was just before five o’clock when he reached the second-floor landing of his apartment building and paused at the Napoleon-era door. The address he’d secured for his family was well above what he and Romy could afford in the private housing market, but after a recent security scare, when Philippe Manerie was revealed as a mole in the Company, the de Payns family had been relocated to a beautiful apartment in the thirteenth arrondissement, reserved for well-connected military and intelligence officers.
He pushed through the door and out of habit deadlocked it behind him. From down the hall he could smell fish baking and the sounds of SpongeBob making sense of his world. He emerged in the large kitchen and living area and saw his sons lying in front of the television.
‘Hi, Dad,’ called out Patrick, who had a mouth full of orange. Oliver rolled a Lego machine-of-war across the carpet, oblivious to his surrounds.
De Payns wandered back down the hall and found Romy at her computer in the spare bedroom. She had changed from her professional clothes into jeans and a tight-fitting tank top. De Payns had a quick flash of what if and put on his best smile, but her expression when she looked up from the screen put paid to that idea.
‘I have to rewrite a report,’ she said. ‘Can you take care of dinner and deal with the boys?’
Before de Payns could answer she added, ‘And you’ll need to do the shopping—there’s nothing for breakfast.’
‘Can I have a shower first?’ he replied, being sure to wipe any sarcasm from his tone. Her policy job at the Tirol Council environmental think tank was demanding, and even if it was a little lefty, it gave Romy a chance to make a difference in green energy, and he was trying to support her.
Romy eyeballed him. ‘I’ve dealt with the boys on my own for the last two days, and I work too, remember?’
‘Okay, I’ve got it covered,’ said de Payns. He’d been hoping for a pleasant evening, but decided he might as well rip off the Band-Aid now since they were already sniping at each other. ‘I’m off on Monday for three days or so.’
Romy gave him a look. ‘Do they do this on purpose? They know you have a family, right?’
‘Yes, they know.’
‘So, they want you to lose that family?’
De Payns shifted his stance. ‘Is that a threat?’
‘It’s not a threat, it’s fucking exhausting, that’s what it is.’
In de Payns’ experience, once Romy started swearing she was digging in for a fight.
‘It’s important,’ he said.
‘Oh, it’s important, is it?’ she said, slapping her hands on the desk either side of the keyboard. ‘You’re out there playing cowboys and Indians while there are people working on real plans for the planet.’
‘Cowboys and Indians?’ echoed de Payns, a little shocked. ‘That’s what you think I do?’
She shook her head, the anger going out of her. ‘We have different views on how to save the world, that’s all. You and your friends use violence while the people I work with are about ideas and collaboration, trying to build a better world for our kids.’
‘And who protects the kids?’ he asked, the words escaping before he could stop them. ‘An economist with a TED talk?’
■
De Payns stood in the shower, seething; angry with Romy for her intellectual snobbery, and furious with himself for rising to the bait. His wife was smart and so were her colleagues, but that didn’t make him a caveman with a club. And it didn’t make her idealism a shield against some of the monsters he’d met. Truth was, he wished Romy and the Tirol Council were right, that clean energy and aggressive wealth-redistribution policies would solve the world’s evils. Unfortunately, human beings tended towards power and personal gain, and as long as human nature prevailed, the common good would never be the objective of all. There were people out there so greedy and disrespectful of their fellow humans that they would not be stopped until someone like Templar held them by the throat and squeezed the life out of them. Templar did not do TED talks or go to cocktail parties. But Templar was prepared to walk in the dark and protect those who couldn’t. De Payns avoided telling Romy that her husband was also prepared to fight in the dark arena, so that civilians could live in peace. But he wasn’t going to win an argument with Romy by spelling out what he and his colleagues did to keep her kids safe.
He thought about his mission to Monaco as the warm water ran down him and he worked hard to push thoughts of the mission and Johnny out of his head.
Stepping out of the shower, he dried and dressed quickly and returned to Romy in the spare room. Hugging her and reading what she was typing on her computer, he said into her ear, ‘Sorry, honey, I went too far. Thank you for trying to save the world. Next weekend I’ll take Friday off and we’ll go to Deauville.’
He sensed a smile as he kissed her earlobe. ‘I’m off to do the shopping,’ he said.