Philippe Manerie emerged from the arrivals terminal at Islamabad International Airport and squinted at the sunlight. He’d been on and off planes for twenty hours, given he didn’t have the time to wait for a direct flight from Paris. He’d touched down in Rome and spent several hours in transit, and now he had found sanctuary. He had money in a British Virgin Islands account and his luggage held twelve vintage wristwatches collectively valued at around half-a-million US dollars.
He didn’t feel hard done by, and he didn’t feel proud. The choices he had made had cost him his marriage and landed him in a compromising position in Macao. He could blame the drinking and gambling, but he knew in his heart how young that girl was and he hadn’t said no. And when Murad, the Pakistani intel contractor, came knocking with the photographic evidence, the rest was just a formality—a mix of blackmail to keep him on the hook, and money to egg him along.
A blue Jeep Grand Cherokee pulled up outside the terminal building and the door was pushed open. He got in with his small suitcase, and was driven to a compound in the north of Islamabad, on the border of the diplomatic section. The two men he’d driven with walked him to a motel-like quarters at the back of an office building, and when he ducked out for a cigarette he realised that the ring fence of the compound might be designed to keep people in as much as keep people out.
He was fed well, and the next day a thick-set, silver-haired middle-aged man with a military bearing but plain clothes interviewed him in an air-conditioned room.
‘Call me the Colonel,’ he said with a smile, and they debriefed for most of the day. Manerie was cooperative, but he realised the Colonel—who was otherwise very professional—was taking no notes, a curious departure from intelligence procedure.
‘So what are your plans for me?’ asked Manerie after lunch, when he thought he had forged some affinity with his new colleague, whom he assumed was ISI.
‘We have something special,’ said the Colonel, and left it at that.
The third day came and Manerie was surprised to find that the Colonel wanted to discuss his assets.
‘We have to get our cards on the table and trust one another, yes?’ said the Colonel. ‘You have all these watches. Are they stolen?’
Manerie wanted to say, Keep your nose out of my luggage, but thought better of it. ‘No, not stolen. They’re a mobile asset.’
‘If you work for me, I have to know your bank accounts,’ said the Colonel. ‘You must understand this—you are a traitor to France, and so you’d understand that I am extra cautious.’
They went back and forth a few times, but Manerie was reluctant to hand over his banking details and the Colonel finally let it go.
Manerie spent that night in bed wondering how he was going to make money and live in Pakistan. He couldn’t go anywhere else because the Company would find him and either kill him or lock him in a cell at Évreux for the rest of his life, slowly milking him of every piece of intelligence he could remember. It would end badly. People like him did not get their day in court.
After breakfast the next day he and the Colonel were driven to the south of Islamabad, to a large security compound. Manerie saw a sign with the word ‘Agricultural’ in it. It looked like a research facility. They got into an elevator, but instead of going up it plunged several floors below ground, the board lighting up at B5.
‘Time to meet your new colleagues,’ said the Colonel.
They walked along a corridor that smelled of bleach and Manerie was ushered through a doorway. As he entered he was seized by two thugs. He hip-threw the one on his right, driving the younger man into the concrete. But another materialised and the two assailants wrestled him to the damp concrete floor. Subdued, Manerie was strapped to a bolted-down chair. He tried to protest but a piece of duct tape was slapped across his mouth.
In front of him the Colonel had taken a seat at a desk. To his right, in the shadows, was a second man, also strapped to a chair and gagged. Murad!
Manerie’s heart pounded against his chest; he strained against the shackles and tried to yell through the duct tape.
A smaller, thinner man, obviously not military, walked into the room. Despite his panic, Manerie noticed the mustard-coloured cardigan and ugly pants.
‘So,’ said Mustard Cardigan. ‘We have our conspirators?’
Murad flexed his muscles against the shackles, his face purple as he struggled to get words past the gag.
‘All those years and all that money, so these two traitors could undo it,’ said the Colonel.
‘We have to find out how much they divulged,’ said Mustard Cardigan. ‘It might take a few weeks, but they will talk. I can guarantee it.’
The Colonel nodded to a man in a black shirt standing in the shadows, who picked up a power drill from a table and carried it over to Manerie. He revved it and Manerie could feel his bowels clenching as the chrome bit spun in the low light, inches from his face.
‘First things first,’ said the Colonel.
‘I agree,’ said Mustard Cardigan, as if he were deciding who would be dealer in their game of cards. ‘I’d like a few answers.’
Mustard Cardigan tore the tape off Manerie’s face. It stung.
‘Who are you?’ asked Manerie, one eye on the drill, the other on the man in the cardigan. He could think of nothing else to say.
‘You can call me Doctor Bijar,’ said the man, lighting a cigarette as he turned to Murad and tore the tape from his mouth. ‘So tell me, dear friend Murad, how did you miraculously escape from the DGSE at the end of my operation?’
‘I ran,’ croaked Murad, as if he had a frog in his throat.
‘You ran?’ sneered Bijar.
‘I lost Aguilar in the Metro,’ said Murad, through shallow breaths. ‘The cops stopped him—I got lucky.’
‘That was your escape, but what about at the water works?’ prompted the small man. ‘Everyone is shot or captured, except the very lucky Murad?’
‘It wasn’t just DGSE at the water works,’ stammered Murad. ‘There were special forces, too. They made us.’
‘Curious,’ said Bijar with soft menace, ‘that my program was dismantled by the French at the very last moment, yes?’
Murad shrugged, staying cooler than Manerie. ‘I told you after Palermo that we had a new risk. My face wasn’t listed with any intelligence service until this Aguilar saw me on the ferry.’
‘That’s true,’ said Manerie, seeing a chance to build credibility. ‘We had the name—Murad—but no pictures or sightings.’
Bijar smoked and looked at the floor. Then he looked at Murad. ‘Tell me why you called to tell me the Frenchman’s name was Aguilar only after he’d left the dinner? It was a little too late, yes?’
Murad shrugged. ‘I didn’t know he was in Islamabad until Manerie told me. Then I rang you immediately. Given the timing, I imagined he’d still be in the apartment with you and your sister.’
‘I’m not in the Y Division,’ offered Manerie, looking for the angle. ‘They’re in their own building and they’re very secretive.’
‘So how did you find out about this dinner at my sister’s apartment?’
Manerie gulped. ‘The director of DGS is given a list of active operation names every week. I saw a name I wasn’t familiar with—Alamut. I dug around, found a briefing note in another director’s safe that referred to a dinner in Islamabad. That’s when I informed Murad.’
Bijar crushed his cigarette. ‘Alamut—the Valley of the Assassins. Don’t you love these clever Franks?’
The Colonel took over. ‘The DGSE released a report saying the five passports that Murad would buy from Aguilar were indeed destroyed.’
‘Correct,’ said Manerie.
The Colonel looked at Murad. ‘So how was it that you obtained five French passports to gain access to the high-security section of the Saint-Cloud water facility?’
Murad nodded at Manerie, who answered. ‘I provided passports created by the DGSE.’
The Colonel, a career intelligence professional, was incredulous. ‘You mean, passports used by DGSE field agents? Passports used for their cover?’
‘Well, yes,’ said Manerie, embarrassed that even the Colonel found this dishonourable. ‘I had to work on short notice.’
‘You would give us passports created by the French secret service, to allow a terror act to take place in Paris?’
Manerie slumped.
The Colonel slowly shook his head. ‘I doubt we could have kept you safe in Pakistan once your employer realised what you did,’ said the Colonel. ‘But there’s something else of interest to me. The passports would have secured you three million euros—and yet you provided them for free?’
‘I imagined I’d be paid,’ said Manerie. ‘But I haven’t seen it.’
The Colonel turned to Murad. ‘Tell me, Murad, about this DKB bank account of yours in Munich?’
‘Munich?’ echoed Murad, astonished. ‘I don’t bank in Munich.’
‘Interesting,’ said the Colonel, reading from a sheaf of papers. ‘A DKB account in the name of Nasim ul-Huq was just opened in Munich, and an amount of one-and-a-half million euros was deposited by Philippe Manerie.’
‘What?’ exclaimed Manerie. ‘That’s a lie!’
‘The bank statement doesn’t lie,’ said the Colonel, shaking it at Manerie. ‘You sent it from your Turkish bank account five days ago—just as you were leaving Paris, I guess?’
Manerie’s head swirled. The bastards had framed him! ‘I don’t have a Turkish bank account,’ he spluttered. ‘Given my background, do you really think I’d open an offshore bank account in my own name?’
The Colonel seemed not to hear. He skipped to a new page. ‘Tell me, Philippe, how did you manage to leave France so easily? It’s not like the DGSE to let a traitor live happily ever after.’
‘I kidnapped Aguilar’s family, told him to hold off until I was clear of France.’
The Colonel nodded sagely. ‘And why did your bank account receive three million euros from the French government?’
‘It didn’t,’ stammered Manerie. ‘I mean, it’s not my bank account. Jesus Christ, three million?!’
‘The statement says you received the money and immediately sent half of it to Murad’s bank in Munich,’ said the Colonel. ‘You two thought you could arrive here, with these financial arrangements with the DGSE, and you’d play with us without any consequences?’
Manerie looked at Murad and Murad stared back, disbelieving.
‘We’ve been set up,’ said Murad.
‘Or you’re setting up Pakistan, perhaps?’ replied the Colonel. ‘You wouldn’t be the first.’
The Colonel nodded and a big hand slapped tape across Manerie’s mouth. Murad said a final no as he was re-gagged. The two men looked at each other, bug-eyed and hopeless; they’d been fucked by the French.
‘Well, gentlemen,’ said Dr Bijar. ‘I’m sorry to say that we’ll need all of your bank details, and full disclosure about your deals with the DGSE. This is the minimum you can do in hope of forgiveness—and a quick death.’
Manerie tried to reason through his duct tape, his voice reduced to pathetic whining. Across from him, Murad’s chair wobbled in its bolts as he tried to move his body against his constraints.
‘Colonel,’ said Bijar, rising to leave, ‘I’ll let you play with your toys, but please keep in mind that I need their main organs for my tests. Farewell, my friends.’
‘That’s fine,’ said the Colonel. ‘I have just advised our allies of the DGSE that we had to arrest their terrorist in the context of our cooperation. I invited them to debrief him, but they won’t be here for twenty-four hours and, as usual, they might arrive too late to talk to him.’
The black-shirted thug with the power drill revved it and aimed the power tool at Manerie’s left ankle bone. The drill slowed slightly as the bit dug through the flesh and into bone, but then it sped up again as it cut through.
Before he passed out for the first time, Philippe Manerie saw the Colonel flick a piece of flesh from his trousers. Then his own muffled cries for mercy filled his ears and drowned out the screaming drill.