He walked the platforms parallel to his train, looking for watchers and traps. Then he walked the length of his train to Marseille. It wasn’t the high-speed train he’d caught from Naples, but the windows were large and he could see clearly into the cabins. At his carriage, he clocked the fold-out yellow signs saying that the train was being cleaned, but he noticed Jim and a middle-aged man in a dark suit waiting for him inside the carriage. Philippe Manerie looked over the tops of his spectacles through the window. No expression, no mannerisms. A blank slate. A perfect DGS executive. De Payns recognised the face because he’d seen it across the office and in official biographies. But he’d only met him once before, a long time ago, on a night flight into Mitrovica, when de Payns was flying TBM 700s into northern Kosovo. The face that now stared back had once been his passenger, surrounded by people who looked like Jim.
De Payns boarded the train and walked to his seat. Manerie was seated directly across the aisle and Jim in the seat behind de Payns’.
‘Aguilar,’ said Manerie. The director leaned over and offered his hand. ‘Philippe Manerie.’
De Payns shook. ‘Director.’
‘Excuse the cloak and dagger; I don’t make a habit of it.’
De Payns smiled. He knew Manerie’s reputation for surprise meetings and interventions. He was nicknamed Jack, because he sprung up like Jack-dans-la boîte. He was dressed like an accountant but carried menace like a waft of aftershave. If even some of the rumours about his special forces career were true, he was not someone to be played with.
‘I hear Falcon wasn’t completed,’ said Manerie, his face trying to make a smile. Like de Payns, he had the blue eyes and high cheekbones of the northern French.
De Payns shrugged. ‘Not sure I know what you’re talking about.’
Jim snorted and Manerie turned and looked at his henchman with a smile. ‘I told you he was solid, non?’
‘Oui,’ said Jim, genuinely amused.
De Payns let it go. People like him didn’t get into conversations about operations with those who didn’t need to know. If you weren’t in the room at Noisy, then you weren’t in the loop. You messed with that rule and people got hurt.
‘We’re all in the Forty-four, ami,’ said Manerie, referring to the French external intelligence service’s initial raising out of the 44th Infantry Regiment. ‘But let’s move along from Falcon and get to what is my business.’
De Payns shrugged. At the front of the carriage a cleaner’s phone sounded. She leaned her mop against the bulkhead and took the call.
‘You know what I do,’ said Manerie, ‘so you know that while I may not work at Noisy, I am very interested in the crumb trails from the Bunker.’
De Payns didn’t like the man’s tone. The DGS was the office that monitored counterespionage efforts against the DGSE. It was the office that tried to weed out those who were compromised or were being blackmailed to work against France. It also caught traitors who were just doing it for the money.
‘Can I help you, Director?’ asked de Payns.
‘You can help France,’ said Manerie. ‘Is that something you’d like to do?’
De Payns’ face tensed for just a split second but Manerie saw it.
‘I didn’t mean it like that,’ said Manerie, holding up the peacemaker’s hand. ‘I acknowledge your service to France. You are not the issue.’
De Payns sensed his neck muscles straining and he leaned back into the seat, forcing himself to relax.
Manerie rested his hand on a leather zip-up satchel beside him on the seat. ‘I referred to Falcon because we have a problem, non?’
De Payns breathed out.
Manerie continued. ‘Has it occurred to you that we are compromised?’
De Payns looked through the window and watched a railway employee walk down the platform. He tried to disassociate himself from what was coming but in his head a voice was screaming, Who fucked us in Sicily?
‘I take your silence as agreement,’ said Manerie. ‘You probably want some answers yourself?’
De Payns turned back and looked at him. ‘How did you find me?’
Manerie smirked. ‘Well, that’s one question.’
‘Here’s another,’ said de Payns, looking for facial and vocal reactions. ‘Why intrude on my way back to Paris, before being sure that I’m not being watched? Why put me in danger by revealing my real identity?’
‘Jim, did you use Alain’s name outside the station?’ asked Manerie, talking to Jim but looking at de Payns.
‘No, Director.’
‘Jim, have I used Alain’s name in this carriage?’
‘No, Director.’
‘Jim, you’ve conducted hundreds of overwatch operations in your career—what is your assessment of this meeting?’
‘We’re clean, Director,’ said Jim.
Manerie eyeballed de Payns. ‘In the army we had a saying that went something like: Don’t shit on another man’s security arrangements until you’re one hundred and ten per cent certain of your own.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ de Payns lied.
Manerie made a pained face. ‘Don’t you? You’re bitching at me for catching you before you get to Paris, and yet Operation Falcon is on my radar because it’s clearly been compromised.’
De Payns wanted to protest that it wasn’t his fault, but Manerie would know that. He was here because de Payns was Falcon’s chef de mission.
Manerie leaned in. ‘I have a proposal for you, Aguilar, that I strongly recommend you agree to.’
‘Really?’
‘As of this moment, you’ll report to me on any meeting or conversation you have at the Bunker, or with anyone who works from the Bunker. Understood?’
‘I don’t know this Bunker.’
‘It’s in Noisy,’ Manerie snarled. ‘It looks like an old fort from the outside but many interesting people work there.’
‘Sounds like fun,’ said de Payns, his mind focused on where the director was going with this.
‘Yes, very interesting people, some of whom are probably working for our enemies.’
De Payns could feel his nostrils flaring. The jabber of the cleaner speaking into her phone echoed into the silence between them. ‘You want me to spy on Noisy?’
Jim and Manerie stared at him.
Finally, Manerie nodded slightly. ‘Would this be a problem?’ ‘I work for France,’ said de Payns.
‘But, bien sûr, these are people you trust with your life,’ said Manerie. ‘Can you help me with this problem without loyalties clouding your judgement?’
‘I don’t work for you,’ said de Payns.
Manerie nodded slowly and reached for his satchel. ‘Perhaps we need to define our relationship, non?’ He reached into his satchel, pulled out an 8×10 black-and-white photograph and handed it over.
De Payns looked down and saw a picture of himself in a pale business shirt and dark chinos. It was a sunny day so he was wearing sunglasses. There were cups of coffee on a table in front of him and on the other side of the table was a dark-haired forty-something Caucasian male in a polo shirt. A sticker on the bottom right of the photograph indicated an address in Amsterdam and a date. De Payns handed back the picture.
‘So you saw the date?’ asked Manerie, feigning concern as he tucked the photograph into his satchel. ‘I also have the declarations for that week.’
‘I’m sure you do,’ said de Payns.
‘And no declaration from you, yet this man in the picture is Mike Moran, who works for British SIS.’
De Payns wanted to say, He’s a friend of mine, but that would open up too many other options for Manerie. The DGS had him—he’d met with a person of interest and not made a compte rendu d’entretien, an official declaration of contact. Total disclosure was a basic condition of employment in French intelligence.
‘I’m not interested in Moran,’ said Manerie. ‘I assume your conversation with him was advancing France, perhaps even some shared history between your families?’
De Payns nodded; Manerie obviously knew that the Morans were friends of the de Payns.
‘But,’ continued the director, ‘we have a failed operation in Sicily. Are you not curious about that?’
De Payns shrugged.
‘And we have, what is it, five French passports?’
‘Sounds about right,’ said de Payns.
‘Where are they right now?’
‘Destroyed and sitting in three rubbish bins at Porto di Palermo.’
Manerie stared at him. De Payns stared back.
‘So,’ said Manerie. ‘Dead people, failed operation, missing passports and suspicions of a mole. Your file doesn’t suggest you’re a man who’d be happy with that.’
De Payns breathed out. ‘They’re not missing, they’re destroyed. By the book. What do you want me to do?’
Manerie smiled. ‘Jim will get a démarqué phone to you and he’ll create a plan de liaison, with a dead mailbox.’
‘Are we looking at anyone particular?’ asked de Payns, feeling sick.
‘I want you to consider the people you’d never really suspect,’ said Manerie. ‘I want to hear your suspicions before anyone at the Cat hears them.’
‘I trust everyone I work with.’
‘Of course, of course,’ said Manerie, trying for a jovial tone. ‘But I’m not friends with any of your colleagues. For me it’s a just a question of: Who knew everything? And who fucked us?’
‘That’s a small group,’ said de Payns, as the cleaners departed the carriage and took their yellow sign with them.
‘Very small,’ said Manerie. ‘As an example, how well do you really know Guillaume Tibet? This is just an example, of course …’
De Payns’ breath caught in his throat. Was the man serious? He looked away for fear the director might guess that de Payns wanted to kill him.
‘Act as planned in Paris, okay?’ said Manerie. He stood and grabbed de Payns by the shoulder. ‘All for France, right?’
After Manerie and Jim departed, de Payns sat there, stunned. The director of security at the DGS had warned him to keep an eye on his own team—and Shrek in particular.