He put the battery into his phone as he reached street level at the Metro and when it powered up there were two text messages from Romy. Both asked him to call her. He made the call as he walked with the late afternoon commuters.
‘Hi, honey, how are you?’ he asked as she picked up. His hangover was still substantial.
‘Just wanted to check with you,’ she said. ‘Ana invited us to dinner.’
De Payns dodged other walkers, also with phones to their ears.
‘Um …’
‘The kids are very close,’ said Romy. ‘They pushed for this.’
De Payns was uncomfortable, but he was also aware that as their children grew up he couldn’t control the friendships they made.
‘I said we’d head over around seven,’ Romy told him.
Great, thought de Payns. The whole thing was planned. One of those arrangements that was not really optional at all.
Across the road he saw Jim, obviously waiting. Jim put on his cap and de Payns walked to the pedestrian crossing and waited for the green signal. He walked westwards from the Port-Royal RER station towards Montparnasse Cemetery. Jim led them into one of the leafier streets, filled with grand Belle Époque apartment buildings with awnings over the restaurants and cafes at street level. They cut down a side alley, which de Payns never liked, although this one had old cobble pavers under foot and ended in a tall cast-iron gate, which Jim pulled back and walked through. They were now inside one of Paris’s private gardens, which formed a park from the combined backyards of an entire block of Montparnasse. They wove through trees that were hundreds of years old and crossed a bridge over a brook. De Payns pulled back as they walked across an enormous lawn. He didn’t know this garden and he was wary of being so exposed.
Jim must have sensed his reluctance, because as he reached the edge of the lawn he stopped and looked back at de Payns, making a small gesture with his head. Then he walked towards a brick cottage which looked like a gardener’s quarters. De Payns advanced as Jim reached the cottage door.
‘Come on. You walk like an old woman,’ said the former soldier, holding the door open and gesturing for de Payns to enter.
De Payns paused at the threshold and looked Jim in the eye. ‘This is on you, Jim,’ he said. ‘If I have a problem in there, then you have a problem. Understand?’
Jim laughed. ‘You and I already have a problem, mon pote. Now get in the goddamn room.’
De Payns ducked under the mossy lintel into a low-ceilinged space that might once have housed a family. Now it was filled with lawnmowers and motorised yard equipment and shelves of chemicals. In the dusty corner was a kitchen and sitting area, and on a sheet-covered sofa sat Philippe Manerie.
‘I’m in a hurry,’ said the director. ‘Sit.’
De Payns walked to a wooden kitchen table and pulled out a rickety chair.
‘There’s no need for the crap you’re giving Jim,’ said Manerie. ‘We are all on the same side, and anything he asks of you is an order from me.’
De Payns looked at the soldier, who was standing guard at the door. ‘Sorry, darling.’
‘You’re forgiven, ma chérie,’ said Jim.
‘Stop it, both of you,’ snapped Manerie. He looked at de Payns. ‘You owe me some insights. What’s happening with the Falcon investigation?’
‘Still no report of a body that we could confirm as Commodore. We have a name for the dead Turkish bodyguard, but we’re doing more work on who he really is,’ said de Payns. ‘All the debrief reports are in, and when the director of operations has formed his own view of what went wrong, he’ll show it to me and ask me to comment.’
‘What is his view?’
‘We were fucked by someone close enough to know what we had planned in Palermo that night.’
‘What’s your view?’ asked Manerie.
‘Sayef Albar knew about the passports before I left the ferry in Palermo. Maybe it was Commodore and maybe someone was wired up.’
Manerie rose to his feet.
‘Just one thing,’ said de Payns. ‘Who’s the mole? Any ideas?’
‘Lots,’ said Manerie, walking for the door.
The kids played an Xbox game on the living room television while de Payns, Romy and Ana sat around the kitchen table drinking Beaujolais. It was a comfortable apartment but not ostentatious—three bedrooms and two bathrooms was doing well in Montparnasse, but the place was compact. The husband, Rafi, stood at the stove, tending a ceramic device that looked like a cooling tower for a nuclear power plant, but it was emitting delicious smells that filled the apartment.
‘… so I say to this boss manager, why would I need a praying room? And he say, for your praying rug.’
At this, Rafi made the Middle Eastern version of a Gallic shrug, and Ana and Romy laughed. De Payns went along with it, but not wholeheartedly.
‘So, Rafi,’ he said, ‘I guess you’re a Christian, right?’
‘By upbringing, yes,’ said Rafi. ‘But not so much the choirboy.’
He was a chatty engineer, enjoying his life in Paris, and his wife was a Frenchwoman, although one of her grandparents was Syrian. It was very Parisian, and if de Payns wasn’t professionally paranoid he would have liked to relax and have a few drinks. However, stories that self-advertised the teller as non-Muslim simply made him edgy. And women who were beautiful, intelligent and confident—but made nothing of it—were worthy of suspicion. When he was first plucked from the Intelligence Division and inducted into the Y Division at the Bunker, he was taught the skills of counterintelligence, especially when countering female operatives. It hadn’t been until de Payns was firmly inside the Bunker that he realised how devastating a female operative could be when pitted against the male ego. Even the most unappealing man, who had never been with a beautiful woman, could be flattered into feeling entitled to such beauty and intelligence. As they said in the spy game, a beautiful woman doesn’t bring you undone—she makes you bring yourself undone.
Conversation moved across Macron, the gilets jaunes, French petrol taxes and the chances of France in the coming European Football Championship. Romy accepted a second glass of wine from Ana and then leaned back into him and de Payns gave her a quick kiss on the neck, feeling her soft blonde hair on his face. The kids came to the table when Rafi called that dinner was almost ready, and de Payns excused himself and made for the bathroom. He counted off one child’s bedroom and a closed door that he assumed was the spare room. He entered a white-tiled bathroom near the apartment’s front door, where there was a toilet, sink and bathtub with a showerhead above it. Two blue towels on a rack, a child’s T-shirt and underwear on the floor in the corner. He moved to the vanity, opened the mirror-door cabinet and saw a tube of toothpaste, a bulk packet of toothbrushes, an unopened bar of soap, a clear plastic punnet of elastic hair ties and a bottle of head lice lotion.
Closing the cabinet, he checked the vanity counter and opened the doors underneath, where there was a spray bottle of shower cleaner and several cleaning sponges. The toilet cistern was white ceramic—he lifted it and checked for hidden items. De Payns flushed the toilet and washed his hands. As he left the bathroom, he noticed a patchouli-like scent that lingered in the house. He paused in the hallway—the door across the hallway was three inches ajar. Through the gap he confirmed it was the master bedroom. He paused and tried to get a line of sight through the gap, but as he looked to his left he realised the Homsi child had left the table to do something with his Xbox, and he was looking straight at him. De Payns smiled and walked towards the boy, who immediately stood up and returned to the table. As de Payns resumed his seat and watched Rafi serve his meal, he wondered what the child had been doing at the Xbox. Romy gave him a warning look and de Payns eased back in his chair and smiled. He drained the last of his wine and held up his glass.
Ana was ready with the bottle. ‘Nice to get to know you, Alec,’ she said, with a winning smile.