De Payns dimmed the lights of the top-floor SCIF and switched on the projector. In the room were Frasier, Briffaut, Lafont, de Payns and Garrat. The Alamut team had worked for the past week and put in an eleven-hour Monday to assemble the package that de Payns hoped would green light the next phase.
He started with the MERC itself, the images coming up nicely from deleted shadows on a CF card. He pointed to the double security fences, the barren ground and scrub between the MERC fences and the roads. He also had some good shots of the 6 p.m. queue of cars leaving the MERC, and with a laser pointer he indicated the black Mercedes-Benz waiting to enter the T-junction and turn north on the main road. Templar’s photographs of the VIP and his house were excellent. They showed a medium-height man in his late forties, with middle-management clothing worn shabbily. He had a greyish beard clipped close to his olive skin and a full head of hair, also greying and cut short.
‘We don’t have a name or a position for our person of interest, but as you can see, he is well protected.’
He clicked between the shots of the bodyguards—one was bigger in the chest and arms than the other, but they were both in their late thirties, wore black suits and white shirts, and gave themselves away with black tactical boots on their feet. Operators required to do the physical stuff liked a solid footing.
‘One bodyguard stays in the car and does random loops and circuits,’ said de Payns, clicking to a close-up of the more slightly built man. ‘The other lives in the house with our VIP.’ He brought up a photograph of a heavy-jowled man. ‘The car is registered to the Pakistani Ministry of Agriculture and the house is owned by a government agency that validates pesticides and herbicides for farm use.’
‘Anyone else of interest from the MERC?’ asked Lafont.
‘Not really,’ said de Payns. ‘This was the most expensive car exiting the facility, and from the beginning we were tracking three IMSI numbers from it. We can say this person is senior at the MERC, he’s guarded and under surveillance.’
De Payns switched tack. ‘I asked the DT to do an environnement téléphonique on this number,’ said de Payns, referring to the Technical Directorate, which along with Operations, Intelligence and Administration, made up the four directorates of the DGSE. ‘We know that on the Thursday of our operation, there was a call from one of the three IMSIs that lasted exactly ten minutes. It seemed like a trained thing to do. The DT went back for two years and found that the call occurs every Thursday at the same time, for ten minutes.’
‘And?’ asked Garrat.
‘This,’ said de Payns, flicking through the images until he reached a list of phone calls under the number associated with the IMSI that made the ten-minute call. ‘Most of the other calls from this phone were junk. They were internal and seemed to be government-allocation cell phone numbers. His average call is three minutes and nine seconds. He’s not chatty.’
‘So a ten-minute call stands out,’ Frasier observed. ‘Especially a regular one.’
De Payns clicked to a new page of phone calls, this time with the ten-minute calls highlighted in orange.
‘We went over these calls and, as you can see, all the ten-minute calls were to the same cell phone number, and they all occurred just after 6 p.m. Islamabad time, on a Thursday.’
De Payns knew his audience was transfixed. It was important to get the narrative right if you wanted to push forward to ‘actions’. The raw product had to be made to mean something, especially to Frasier, the man who could make big things happen.
‘For the last seventeen months, every Thursday, at the same time, for ten minutes, never more.’
Lafont smiled. ‘Are you going to tell us who this scientist is calling?’
‘I’m afraid I can’t—but our tech teams estimate the recipient is in Mons.’
‘In Belgium,’ said Lafont, eyes wide.
‘Just over the border,’ snarled Frasier. ‘And the answer’s yes.’
‘I’ll need a full support team,’ said de Payns.
‘I said yes—get on it.’ The director of operations shook his head. ‘Belgium! Holy fuck.’