The overnight Y-9 desk picked up Starkand’s cell phone shortly before midnight. It was activated for nineteen minutes in Bern, Switzerland, during which time the duty OT, Tranh, texted Lolo, who contacted Aguilar.
De Payns was picked up by Paulin and Lolo from a street corner at 1.21 a.m. The vehicle was an Iveco trades van used by the Bunker as a sub. Paulin drove and Lolo sat in the back, preparing his spinner laptops. They headed south for the Swiss border on the A6 freeway, while the mission team—Templar, Danny and Brent—headed for Bern in another sub.
They arrived on the outskirts of the Swiss capital at 7.44 a.m., driving across a bridge over the Aare River into the medieval city.
De Payns held the transmit button in his jeans pocket. ‘Y radio check.’
The answers—‘Copy Templar,’ ‘Danny,’ ‘Lolo,’ ‘Paulin,’ ‘Brent’—came back to de Payns’ earpiece. As they drove up a hill into the city, the snow-covered mountains of the Bernese Alps loomed in the distance.
‘Lolo, you got the tower details?’ asked de Payns from his front seat perch, cracking a window and lighting a cigarette.
Lolo read out the tower that Starkand’s call had been routed through.
‘Only one tower?’
‘Yes,’ said Lolo. ‘Nineteen minutes on one call, then he shut it down. There’s only one hotel definitely in the range of this tower—and I guess he likes luxury?’
‘He’s staying at the Bellevue Palace, huh?’ replied Paulin. ‘That’s where you stay in Bern when someone else is paying.’
De Payns got on the net and told Templar where they were headed, leaving his colleague to instruct the mission team.
They drove around a block, while Lolo accessed the hotel’s online photo gallery. They parked at the end of a narrow road that ran along the eastern side of the hotel, a hundred-and-fifty-year-old sandstone edifice. Paulin and Lolo walked back to the main road—Kochergasse—to take seats at a cafe that overlooked the entry to the Bellevue, and de Payns entered the foyer of the hotel, grabbed a Le Monde and took a seat in the visitors’ lounge. From his armchair he could see the menu board for the restaurant breakfast and smell the bacon.
‘Alert Templar,’ came Templar’s voice in de Payns’ earpiece. ‘We’re at the rear of the Bellevue.’
‘Copy Aguilar,’ said de Payns. ‘The restaurant looks busy, let’s get someone in there.’
‘Templar copy.’
The first bump from Starkand’s IMSI came at 8.28.
‘Alert. Target has activated his phone,’ said Lolo on the radio net. ‘It’s close by.’
‘Tell me if it moves,’ said de Payns from his seat in the hotel’s lobby.
Six minutes after the phone powered up, the man they knew as Starkand walked down the red-carpeted steps of the hotel lobby, fifteen metres away from de Payns. He was dressed in a blue suit and taupe overcoat, a dark brown leather carryall over his shoulder.
De Payns let Starkand walk pass him and looked for overwatch. When he judged it clear, he keyed his mic. ‘Y alert, alert. Target is wearing a taupe overcoat, a dark brown leather carryall over his shoulder. Target is exiting the hotel, turning east along Kochergasse.’
‘Danny copy,’ came the response, and Danny—dressed in jeans, a black woodsman’s jacket and a blue ski hat—stood from his table at the cafe and exited onto Kochergasse.
De Payns stayed calm, controlling his nervous energy. He didn’t want to keep getting photographs of Starkand—he wanted material progress.
‘Vehicle two, position yourself ahead of target,’ said de Payns. ‘Danny, you have the lead.’
The response came back affirmative, and the van moved slowly into traffic.
De Payns walked to the valet at the front steps, holding out his dark green woollen scarf.
‘I think one of your guests just dropped this,’ said de Payns, pointing after Starkand. ‘Over there—good-looking chap, nice suit and an overcoat.’
The valet looked down the street. ‘Ah, yes, Mr Vadasz. I can take that for him.’
De Payns smiled. ‘It’s no problem. I’m walking his way, so I may as well give it to him. He might be cold without it.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ said the doorman.
‘Did you say Peter Vadasz?’
‘No, it’s Michael—Michael Vadasz.’
As de Payns reached the second car, Danny’s voice sounded in his earpiece. ‘Danny for Y, target walking east on Münstergasse, even numbers side.’
De Payns saw Starkand to his left, moving eastwards along the street, which was broad for a medieval European city. He found a zone about forty metres behind the target, blending with the morning commuters.
Starkand crossed the street to the riverside, and then veered right into the square in front of the imposing Bern Minster that dominated the skyline of the Old City. There was a poster board in front of de Payns and he paused at it, like a tourist looking for directions, and watched Starkand stop at one of Switzerland’s bright yellow post-boxes; he produced four envelopes from his bag and slid them into the box.
‘Aguilar for Y,’ said de Payns into his radio. ‘Target just mailed four large envelopes.’
Starkand stood back from the post-box and looked around casually, like a tourist. Then he retraced his steps across the square as the sun hit the street and walked west down the odd numbers side of Münstergasse.
De Payns held back. ‘Aguilar for Y, target walking west on Münstergasse, odd numbers side.’
‘Danny copy, I have the target.’
De Payns could see Starkand eighty metres in front of him, taking his time. He paused beside a bakery and pretended to look at the pastry displays.
‘Danny for Y,’ came the voice twenty seconds later. ‘Target is crossing the street to even numbers—entering a cafe on Münstergasse, beside a travel agency. Cafe name: Frohsinn.’
‘Copy,’ said de Payns. ‘Stand by.’
He knew that Paulin would be positioning the sub on Münstergasse and that Templar had his sub on the parallel street.
De Payns blended with the pedestrian flow and walked towards the cafe.
In the entrance to the modern eatery he almost bumped into a brunette woman. He allowed her to go first and she flashed him a smile. Following her in, he decided that she looked better in her orange silk blouse, though she still looked quite stunning in a blue woollen coat over a white jumper.
‘Aguilar for Y, target in contact. Contact is female—she is known to us. I want a picture. Templar, Brent, you stay on her after she leaves,’ said de Payns.
He took a seat in the half-full cafe and perused a menu, listening as the woman greeted Starkand. It was small talk, as far as he could make out, and they both spoke in English but with jumbled accents.
He ordered a coffee and pain au chocolat and gave up trying to hear their murmurings. The cafe had jazz playing and he was only getting one in five words.
As he finished his coffee, the woman—who was clearly in charge—stood and left.
Four minutes later, so did Starkand.
De Payns gave him a minute’s head start and then he paid.
Out on the street he saw Starkand to his left.
The radio activated in his ear. ‘Y alert—female target just got in a taxi,’ said Brent.
‘Copy,’ said de Payns, zipping his jacket against the cold as he followed Starkand along the street. ‘Templar?’
‘Templar copy.’
Starkand led de Payns back to the Münsterplatz, where half an hour earlier he’d posted his envelopes. This time the target walked directly across the square and disappeared from view down a public pathway. The square was on a plateau overlooking the Aare River, and when de Payns followed to where the target had disappeared he saw that the pathway led down through a maze of roofs and vegetable gardens to the main riverside promenade.
‘Aguilar for Y, visual on target,’ said de Payns into his radio. ‘He’s on a pedestrian-only passage to the river road.’
‘Vehicle one copy,’ came Lolo’s voice. ‘We’re on our way.’
De Payns pulled back, blending with Japanese tourists and local joggers, as he navigated the centuries-old descent to the river, some of it open and other parts covered and inducing of claustrophobia. He emerged out of one gallery of stairs and almost ran into Starkand, who was standing in the morning sunlight, looking over a vegetable garden and speaking into his phone. De Payns walked past him, clicking on the radio to confirm he had visual, before joining a family of Americans who were photographing the gardens.
‘It’s like a rabbit warren in here,’ said de Payns, holding up his phone to take a shot.
‘The Fricktreppe,’ said the middle-aged American woman in a Chicago Bears hoodie.
‘No need to swear,’ said de Payns, and the woman laughed and slapped his arm, before repeating the joke for her hard-of-hearing husband.
He used the social activity to swing slightly and take a shot of Starkand, who was still on the phone and did not seem interested in the Franco-American jokes.
De Payns wandered away from the Americans and pretended to be looking at his photos, but he was concentrating on the voice in his earpiece: Templar, letting him know that the woman in the cafe was heading in the direction of the airport.
Starkand walked past him and de Payns followed, descending the Fricktreppe until they emerged in the shaded Badgasse, a cobbled narrow street between two rows of four-storey townhouses. There was a taxi idling thirty metres away, where a woman was paying her fare. Starkand raised his hand, walking towards the red-and-yellow taxi.
‘Target is taking a taxi. Vehicle one—position?’ asked de Payns into the mic.
‘Vehicle one, on the promenade.’
‘Stand by,’ said de Payns and made for a passage that other tourists were walking through. Moving quickly, he came out in sunlight on the promenade, his team’s Iveco van fifteen metres to his right. Climbing into the van, he pointed. ‘He’s in a red-and-yellow cab, heading east.’
Paulin hit the gas and the van surged forward, but as they approached the crossroad, the taxi came out of the street and turned right, rather than left, so it was going in the opposite direction to the van.
‘That’s him,’ said de Payns as the taxi passed him, Starkand in the rear seat.
Paulin pulled a U-turn so they were heading west on the promenade, but they’d lost the taxi.
‘Lolo, anything?’ asked de Payns.
‘No, boss. He turned on the phone for two minutes but it’s off the network again.’
‘Anyone see the cab number?’ asked de Payns, who hadn’t.
‘One zero six,’ said Paulin. ‘The company is Nova Taxi.’
‘Get me a number, Lolo,’ said de Payns as the van accelerated through the traffic.
Lolo read out the number and de Payns dialled. A dispatcher picked up immediately.
‘Yes, look,’ said de Payns in French, ‘my wife left her wallet in one of your cabs …’
‘When?’
‘About five minutes ago. I’m in another cab now, and I was hoping you might know where it’s heading? It’s quite urgent—the wallet has all our credit cards.’
‘Do you remember the taxi number?’ the woman asked in good French delivered with Germanic harshness.
‘Taxi one zero six,’ said de Payns. ‘It was my wife he was dropping off. At the Badgasse.’
‘Please wait, caller,’ said the woman, and de Payns was put on hold.
The dispatcher was back on the line within twenty seconds. ‘They’re headed to the Hauptbahnhof—the driver will wait at the drop-off apron out the front.’
‘We’re on our way, thank you so much,’ said de Payns, and disconnected.
They arrived at the drop-off area at the front of the Bern railway station seven minutes later. De Payns got out of the van and walked with the foot traffic into the concrete-and-steel, squared-off railway station, a contrast to the architecture of the Old City. He moved quickly through the morning crowds and caught sight of Starkand, heading for the downward escalators. De Payns slowed and announced to the team he had recovered visual. The interior of Bern’s station had three levels of balconies. He couldn’t detect any eyes on him and followed his target to the lower level, where Starkand stopped in front of the departures board, before walking across the concourse. Then he paused at platform seven, beneath the sign advising that the next train was going to Frankfurt and he stopped to look at his phone: a smartphone this time, not the flip-top burner he’d used on the Fricktreppe. De Payns pretended to be interested in the arrivals and departures board. He wished Starkand would get a move on so de Payns could see where he was headed. Worried about lingering too long, de Payns drifted to a kiosk and keyed the radio. ‘Aguilar for Lolo, I need you at the station entrance. Let me know if the target exits.’
‘Lolo copy,’ came the reply. ‘In place at the entrance.’
De Payns looked at the chocolate bars, selected one, and stood at the counter, maintaining a line of sight with the target. As he paid for the chocolate a rumble grew louder and a whoosh of air blew out as a Deutsche Bahn Intercity train roared into platform seven. Starkand walked away from de Payns as the train slowed. De Payns fumbled to pay for the chocolate bar and set off after the target, dodging the travellers who were getting up from their benches and milling around. As he tried to keep sight of the target, another train screeched into platform eight, causing more travellers to start moving.
He got caught behind a high-school hockey team, jockeyed past them, and now realised he’d lost Starkand; the train platform curved so that he could not see the far end, his vision further obstructed by the people now alighting from the newly arrived train and mingling with those boarding.
‘Aguilar, lost visual on target—repeat, lost visual on target,’ he said into the mic, as he got to a position from where he could see the nose of the train, but no Starkand.
‘Shit!’
De Payns walked swiftly to the end of the Frankfurt train, checking the large first-class windows and their luxury interiors, but no Starkand.
As if suddenly remembering he’d left something behind, he turned and walked back the way he’d come, as railway workers called to each other and a whistle echoed down the annoyingly curved platform. To his right, he saw a set of stairs that disappeared downwards into the platform; it was a mid-platform subway that linked the thirteen platforms and led to the main concourse, according to the sign. The Frankfurt train behind him hissed and the doors shut, and the train in front of him—at platform eight—was filling up, people moving into the fluoro-lit cabins. He walked down the subway ramp, and ascended the stairs for platform nine, in time to see the SBB Swiss train for Basel easing out of the station. Through the window, on the far side of the first-class cabin, Starkand sat in an airline-style seat, pulling a magazine from his leather overnight bag. He appeared not to realise he was being observed.
As he walked back to the concourse, de Payns’ mobile phone rang. ‘Templar visual on female target—arriving Bern airport.’
‘Copy Aguilar,’ said de Payns.
De Payns emerged from the warm station into the cold morning and climbed into the van. He turned to Lolo. ‘I lost him, but he’s on his way to Basel.’
The secondary cities of Europe had high-speed trains moving through them at a constant frequency and a person like Starkand—or de Payns for that matter—could head anywhere in Western Europe in the space of a day, without followers being able to predict a destination.
‘Find a list of connecting trains that leave Basel within thirty minutes of his arrival,’ said de Payns. ‘But first, let me have a go on your laptop.’
De Payns opened his own encrypted channel to Briffaut on the laptop and sent him the photograph of Starkand taken in the Fricktreppe, and requested that Briffaut raise the name/pseudonym #MICHAEL VADASZ# with the SIS Maypole. Starkand had eluded de Payns, which was either a fluke or because he’d seen a follower and lost him. De Payns wanted to know which one it was.
Passing back the laptop, he realised he was hungry and suggested a bite to eat.
As Paulin drove them out of Bern and onto the road west to France, they found a mid-size cafe and parked. De Payns’ phone buzzed and Templar’s familiar voice sounded again. ‘Female target has left Bern airport on a private plane—repeat, private plane.’
De Payns nodded to himself. The Starkand situation was starting to stink.
‘Her destination?’ asked de Payns.
‘Ouais mon pote, destination is Larnaca.’
De Payns let his breath go in a long exhale. Orange Top was in charge and she was based in the same city as the yacht he’d seen her embark in Portofino. ‘Confirm Larnaca, Cyprus?’
‘Confirm Cyprus,’ said Templar.