Paulin caught sight of Jabir Okimba shortly before eight o’clock on Sunday morning. It was cold and drizzling, typical of Paris in February.
Paulin had checked Okimba’s address against the file developed by the DR and then spent the night watching from behind a line of dumpsters, on an angle that gave him a view of Okimba’s apartment door on the second floor of a 1980s low-cost estate. Now the mystery man was moving through the grey morning mist towards Gagny station. Paulin took a seat at the opposite end of the carriage to Okimba and stifled a few yawns as they sped into Paris, his job made easier by the bright red down jacket that Okimba wore over jeans and lace-up boots. He assessed Okimba as his sheet showed him: ex-military, still fit and liked to walk as if he had a purpose. The fact that he worked at La Poste was not of interest to Paulin. Many migrants worked at Europe’s largest postal service, but that didn’t mean it was all they did.
Okimba alighted at Saint-Lazare station and made for another platform, a large black sports bag slung across his left shoulder. It was now 8.30 a.m. and there were more people around, allowing his visual signature to be lost in the endless crowds of the Paris train system. Okimba joined a train on the number 12 line heading south across the Seine, and Paulin watched him help a woman with a pram onto the train and then eyeball a couple of lounging youths until they gave up their seat for the lady with the baby.
Monsieur Okimba was not a man to take crap.
Paulin stayed near the back of the carriage and alighted when Okimba did, at Notre-Dame des Champs, a Metro station on the west side of the Jardin du Luxembourg. By then Paulin had decided that Okimba was not in the game, but he was something.
Okimba walked two blocks north-east of the station and turned down a small side street where a church hall was set back from the road. A couple of parents waited outside the hall with their children, and Paulin could see that one of the children—a boy of around ten—had his white gi leggings on under his coat and tucked into his boots.
Okimba greeted the parents and kids, opened the church hall doors, and let them walk in ahead of him. A gentleman, thought Paulin. He emerged from his hide beside a bus stop and fell into step with a woman walking towards the church hall with a boy and a girl, both of whom wore their white gi under cold-weather clothing.
‘Excuse me?’ he said to the woman, as they neared the hall. ‘Is this the martial arts school?’
‘Yes,’ said the woman. ‘The Karate for Life dojo. That man who just unlocked the door is Sensei John.’
‘Okay,’ said Paulin. ‘I have a nine-year-old who wants to do karate. How do you rate this dojo?’
She beamed. ‘Sensei John is the best. He teaches respect and mental strength. And he hates devices, tells kids to engage in life, not to become addicted to an iPhone.’
More parents and children were arriving. Paulin pulled back to the kerb, took a quick photograph of the hall, and slipped his phone back in his pocket. A woman glared at him, perhaps wondering if she was in the photograph. He smiled at her and headed back to the Bunker.
■
De Payns hammered out his reports as best he could. His head buzzed with fatigue and he used coffee to maintain his focus. The events of the previous thirty-six hours were a blur, but Briffaut was waiting on the reports from de Payns, Shrek, Danny and Jéjé before the official debriefings.
Having filed his R report, de Payns hastily constructed the O report, with its subjective observations: Maahi’s intelligence about there probably being more than one group operating under ‘Vulcan’, and Marak’s remarks that the Turks’ main focus was on keeping their country ‘investible’. Then de Payns shut down his computer, checked his safe and was about to kill the lights when Aline appeared at his door.
‘Boss wants to see you, Aguilar.’
Trying to keep a smile on his face, de Payns peered in Briffaut’s door, his backpack over his right shoulder. ‘You called?’
‘Reuters story from Cannes,’ said Briffaut, pushing a one-pager across his desk.
De Payns read the two-paragraph news story issued that morning: a Georgian businessman, Lado Devashvili, had been found dead in his room at the Hotel Splendid in Cannes. He had been shot twice in the head. Police were investigating. Monsieur Devashvili was the former deputy-secretary of the Department of Agriculture in the Soviet Socialist Republic of Georgia. He was survived by his wife and three children.
De Payns pushed the report away. ‘And what about the family?’
‘It’s not your fault,’ said Briffaut, slipping the report into an opened file. ‘You did your job, Lotus did his.’
De Payns nodded. But he felt nauseous.
‘I see you filed your reports from Istanbul,’ said Briffaut. ‘Tell me what I need to know.’
De Payns pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘The shooters were from Libya, run by al-Kaniyat, but they were just musicians who were being coerced. The weapons were chopped-down MP5s. The Turks think the guns were hidden in a Coke vending machine a week ago, which is why the security screening was useless.’
Briffaut nodded. He’d already received the basics from MiT, which had included photographs and biographical information about the Libyan hit squad. ‘You don’t sound convinced.’
De Payns sighed and looked out the office window. ‘The youngest of the hitters was a teenager, Maahi, and the Turks gave me five minutes with him …’
‘And?’
‘He was forced into the mission by an al-Kaniyat commander named Parzan. They’re holding Maahi’s younger brother in Libya. And he said Faisal—I assume al-Mismari—had landed in the area with money for Parzan. They were making small talk, and he asked if Maahi was in the Europe group.’
‘Europe group?’ Briffaut’s brow creased, the implication sinking in. ‘Meaning there’s another group?’
‘That’s how I understood it,’ said de Payns. ‘Maahi also assumed there was another group.’
‘So if they missed Zelenskyy and Kolomoisky, there’s another group ready to complete?’
‘Or,’ said de Payns, ‘it could mean there’s another group with a different mission.’
Briffaut made a face. ‘Tell me what you’re thinking.’
De Payns shifted in his seat. He hadn’t organised his thoughts properly and he’d been trained not to be too creative in his theories. ‘What do we know about the EastMed pipeline, and the Pantheon field?’
Briffaut shrugged. ‘What Lars and Marie told us. Massive gas field off Israel and the gas is going to Egypt and Jordan.’
‘And Europe, if Kolomoisky has his way.’
Briffaut and de Payns stared at one another.
‘We’ve been very focused on Wagner and Libya, the Americans and this information network that’s been manipulating us,’ said de Payns, ‘but the speech Kolomoisky gave to the conference was about his ownership of the Pantheon field. With the US withdrawing support for EastMed, Kolomoisky wants to complete the pipeline into Europe, via Cyprus, Greece and Italy.’
Briffaut leaned back in his chair. ‘And who would hate to see that?’
‘The same people who want Kolomoisky dead.’
Briffaut leaned forward suddenly and looked at his watch. ‘The Lotus material, about the Tartus build-up and the Russian drones …’
‘It fits with Putin’s embrace of Hezbollah and Syria, and his cornering of the Egyptian wheat trade,’ said de Payns. ‘Lars also mentioned that the gas fields off Israel currently don’t send gas to Europe. Maybe the Kremlin wants to keep it that way?’
‘I’ll get Marie and Lars to build out the file on Pantheon and EastMed.’
De Payns suppressed a yawn.
‘This is great timing,’ said Briffaut, standing and looking out his window on Paris as night fell. ‘Jim Valley is meeting with our Russian friend on Tuesday.’
De Payns massaged his temples. ‘Grozny?’
‘Azerbaijan,’ said Briffaut. ‘Keratine seems busy over there. Take a look at this.’
De Payns took the thin file that Briffaut handed him. It was a backgrounder from the DR on Russian intelligence dynamics. It was a regular update that covered seven or eight of the Russian services, highlighting new appointments, deployments and gossip.
‘The FSB section,’ said Briffaut. ‘Page eleven.’
De Payns glanced over the half-page brief, a short paragraph catching his attention:
The FSB is in conflict with the GUSP [Directorate of Special Programs of the President of the Russian Federation]. The conflict arises from Putin’s Special Programs that either cut across FSB operations or detract from its budgets. Senior FSB directors in Moscow complain that the President’s Special Programs create confusion among foreign services with whom the FSB might otherwise cooperate and create diplomatic questions where the FSB wishes none to be raised. Senior FSB people are concerned about Wagner Group’s influence in the Kremlin via the GUSP. The founder of Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, was recently seen inside the Grand Kremlin Palace, accompanied by Leonid Varnachev, a Wagner Group executive currently located at Tartus, Syria.
De Payns looked up. ‘Lenny Varnachev is meeting directly with Putin?’
Briffaut shrugged. ‘If he’s walking around in the Grand Palace with Prigozhin, I’d say he’s got access to the President’s office, and the FSB hate him for it.’
‘You think that Keratine and his FSB buddies are keeping an eye on Wagner Group?’
Briffaut raised an eyebrow. ‘I’d bet they’re all over Varnachev, waiting for him to fuck up so they can push him off the train.’
‘That’s what we’d do,’ said de Payns.
‘Damn right,’ said Briffaut, picking up his cigarettes but not opening the window. ‘I want you there with Jim. Let’s really squeeze Keratine, see what he knows about Lenny Varnachev.’