‘We go back?’ asked Templar, draining one cup of coffee and reaching for the second.

‘We go back,’ said de Payns.

They made three-point alignments in their hotel rooms and headed out after 10 a.m. They concentrated their photography and driving in the north of the city, taking notes and using a map for directions. The mission phones were usually cheap and démarqué, specifically built to suit the operative’s legend but not capable of being used for navigation. They’d load them with pictures of family and colleagues, and a contacts list that reflected their fake profession. French secret service operatives almost never carried smartphones on missions because they carried so much personal data that the data would give away the operative. Even the lack of data on a smartphone would ring alarm bells.

They filled up the Canon’s storage cards with images and downloaded them onto the laptop, and de Payns continued to fill his notebook with observations and suggestions for locations and scenes. He even made thought bubbles for songs that would play well.

They ate in reasonably priced cafes, tipped the waitresses and engaged in conversations about the Islamabad Museum, which contained a two-million-year-old human tool, a product of the ancient Indus civilisations.

They moved southwards at the end of the day, and at 5.32 p.m. bought their coffees at the petrol station with the yellow awning. They stretched, lit cigarettes and played with their phones, waiting for the evening exodus from the MERC. They had three IMSIs listed in the black Mercedes and their job was to whittle it down to one. One person of interest from the MERC, matched with one cell phone IMSI—that’s when the Company could make inroads into the facility.

They spotted the first car speeding from the MERC gatehouse towards the T-junction at the main road, and they crushed their cigarettes and moved to their Nissan. The black Mercedes drove past and the team found a slot in the traffic so there were two vehicles between the two cars as they headed north. After ten minutes, they had the same three IMSIs that they’d caught the day before. They followed the Mercedes, now staying further back and verifying the IMSIs being used in the car.

They drove back into the city and arrived at the Pearl Continental in time to freshen up and go out for dinner at a restaurant around the corner that had left discount vouchers at the hotel. The waitress brought water and menus to their table, and departed without smiling. When she was out of earshot de Payns asked Templar if everything was okay.

‘They searched our room,’ said Templar, deadpan. ‘Yours?’

‘Ours too,’ said de Payns. ‘They were smart enough to return the bouletage.’

‘But not good enough to spot the three-point alignment,’ said Thierry.

The four of them looked at their menus, seeing only Urdu script and what appeared to be bad English translations.