The security door pulled back in the basement area of Y-9, and Lolo let de Payns inside.
‘How’s Starkand’s phone?’ asked de Payns, as he walked towards Lolo’s desk.
‘Last activity was eleven thirty-four a.m., Munich,’ said Lolo, wiping his fingers with a food wrapper. ‘When he puts the battery back in the phone, we’ll know pretty fast.’
A Y-9 operator named Tranh looked up from a bank of four monitors one of which had a large map of Europe on its screen. ‘He’s using the same phone,’ said Tranh. ‘That’s one thing in our favour.’
‘Let me know when we get the signal,’ said de Payns.
De Payns didn’t tell Lolo that a team headed by Templar was also establishing an environment around Lotus, and Jim Valley had been tasked to draw in Keratine.
The security buzzer sounded and the screen beside the door filled with Margot’s face. Lolo leaped up to give entry to Briffaut’s assistant.
‘Boss wants to see you,’ said Margot, one arm full of files and nodding at de Payns. ‘He’s in the park.’
De Payns wandered out to find Briffaut on his favourite bench with a cigarette.
‘The outline of Operation Ellipse looks good,’ said Briffaut, referring to de Payns’ initial counter-assassination pitch. ‘What about the Starkand phone?’
‘He used it this morning in Munich, and then went dark.’
Briffaut nodded. ‘This came through on the diplomatic wire twelve minutes ago,’ he said, handing over three pages of printouts.
De Payns looked at them: a military order giving the go-ahead for Vulcanus. It also referred to the ‘Europe operation’, but gave no details.
De Payns flipped to the next page. It was a Turkish navy confirmation of clear passage for Russian navy missile cruisers and landing craft to pass through the Bosporus—the narrow neck of sea that divided the European part of Turkey from its Middle Eastern rump. It confirmed Russian navy vessels had moved from the Mediterranean to the Black Sea.
The third piece of paper established the movement into the Khmeimim Air Base of Russian receiver modules for downloads of data from the FSB drones operating out of the Syrian air base.
De Payns looked up from the printouts. ‘Genuine?’
Briffaut took back the papers. ‘Probably. They’re being verified.’
‘Where did these documents come from?’
Briffaut tapped his ash. ‘They were in the mail at our Berlin embassy this morning, with a Munich postmark.’
‘Starkand,’ said de Payns. ‘Fuck!’
‘It gets better,’ said Briffaut, sucking on his Camel. ‘DR have looked for similar mail at the embassies and found an earlier one at The Hague, postmark Amsterdam.’
‘When?’ asked de Payns.
‘Few days before Rome,’ said Briffaut. ‘By the way, the British want a Maypole.’
‘Why?’ asked de Payns. A Maypole was a meeting of two intelligence agencies to assess information in common and see if there was any benefit to sharing information.
‘They want an exchange,’ said Briffaut. ‘They have concerns about something that could happen in Europe.’
‘Vulcan?’ asked de Payns.
‘Our external liaison department believes the Brits received the same intel as us from an unknown source,’ said Briffaut. ‘That source might be even more unknown to them than it is to us. If the DR accepts the Maypole, we’ll find out.’
De Payns made to go but his boss touched his forearm. ‘Have a look at these, tell me if you recognise anyone.’
Briffaut produced an A4 envelope that contained three printed photographs in the 8 × 10 format used by intelligence agencies. The first photograph was a grainy blow-up of security footage, featuring a man sitting in the back seat of a car. De Payns didn’t recognise the face. The second photograph was of the same car, focused on the man in the front passenger seat; he had a thick neck and a soldier’s haircut, and de Payns didn’t recognise him either.
He paused on the last picture. It was grainy and it was a still taken from a video. But he knew the face of the man driving the Audi. His name was Mikhail, and he chewed the world’s worst-tasting gum.
‘Him,’ said de Payns, holding up the photograph. ‘One of the Wagner Group heavies on Azzam. Who is he?’
Briffaut took the picture, stashed it inside his jacket. ‘DGSI tracked a few suspicious sightings in the hours after Degarde’s death, and they came up with a charter boat that journeyed up the Seine with three Russians on board. They got off at an industrial dockland and were picked up in a car. The security camera did the rest.’
De Payns’ skin crawled. Wagner Group was operating in Paris and killing the Company’s officers.
‘We’ll get these pricks,’ said Briffaut. ‘It’s just a question of when.’