His team moved fast, and within two weeks de Payns was sitting in his office at Noisy, re-reading the brief he’d written for Mattieu Garrat. Garrat, Briffaut’s 2IC, was running the operation in Mons. They had confirmed to ninety per cent certainty that the woman with the phone of interest—the one receiving weekly ten-minute calls from a senior figure at the MERC in Pakistan—was Anoush al-Kashi. The team had her migrating from Pakistan two years earlier with her husband and two children. No trained intelligence behaviours were detected in her. But the team had not seen a husband after two weeks of solid surveillance, which was a missing piece that de Payns and Garrat would rather have in place. Spouses who could not be sighted or investigated raised uncertainties and risks. Regardless, de Payns was ready to go to the ‘contact’ phase and show his face. No more hiding in a hotel room, huddling in a van or building pretty pictures on a corkboard. It was time to go and do what he was trained for. All he needed was Garrat’s green light, and he’d be entering Anoush al-Kashi’s life.

He made a final check of his report and pushed ‘send’, waited for thirty seconds then shut down his computer. It was summer in Paris, and de Payns wanted to kick a football with his sons and drink wine with his wife.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

CHAPTER

THIRTY-TWO

Mattieu Garrat’s office sat on a corner of the Bunker, giving a southerly view across Paris’s trees and rooflines. De Payns took it in as he paused at the door, coffee mug in hand and Advils in his belly.

‘Alec, Alec,’ said Garrat, gesturing for him to enter. ‘Come in. Sit.’

De Payns took a seat and Garrat regarded him with shrewd, intelligent eyes. ‘Great work on Operation Alamut. You got a team?’

‘Templar’s leading the support team,’ said de Payns.

‘Excellent,’ said Garrat, his shaved head glinting in the morning sun. ‘You look ready for a contact environment.’

‘We’re ready,’ said de Payns. ‘We have to stay on her—she’s our only connection to the MERC.’

De Payns didn’t have to push it too hard. Frasier, Briffaut and Lafont wanted Alamut to go to the next level and Garrat would not stop it.

‘There’s nine of you at the moment,’ said Garrat, tapping on his keyboard and peering at the screen. ‘What am I requisitioning?’

‘A continuation of the current Alamut team. That’ll give us enough people to form a PEC if we need it.’

‘Okay, sounds fair,’ said Garrat. The PEC was prise en compte—a controlled zone where the team could conduct meetings and surveillance activities with a lot of unseen security.

‘What are we calling the person of interest?’

‘Raven,’ said de Payns.

‘Okay,’ said Garrat, typing. ‘What’s the approach?’