De Payns took him through the operation—Templar’s team would continue surveillance on Raven, while the tech team infiltrated her computer and her email and put a tracking device on her car. De Payns covered the research and he took Garrat through the pack—she was of Pakistani origin, married to a pharmacist, also Pakistani; her daughters were nine and thirteen years old. She was a freelance translator from French to Urdu, not an uncommon profession so close to Brussels, and she also listed Pashto and Punjabi as languages she could translate into French and English. There was a report on her phones. She had a Belgian cell phone number that seemed to be her daily usage phone, and also a démarqué French-network phone—the phone of interest—that she used every Thursday afternoon and at no other time. The seemingly lone Pakistani woman with kids could mean a divorce but it could also be a soft exile, in which case that might be used as leverage to recruit her. The translation business could be another leverage, if she needed clients.

‘We’ll pick up what she’s emailing and who her friends and family are,’ said de Payns, ‘and I should be able to give you a plan for contact in a couple of weeks.’

‘Don’t be a stranger,’ said Garrat. ‘With the budget we’re burning on this I need ammunition to keep it going. Understand?’

De Payns smiled. ‘Sure.’

‘I mean it,’ said Garrat. ‘Lafont is pushing for this, and because it’s bioweapons it has some political goodwill, but you have to keep giving me the good stuff—you know what the bean counters are like around here.’

‘You got it,’ said de Payns.

Garrat leaned back, stroked his tie. ‘By the way, the DDC came back.’

‘Oh, that,’ said de Payns, remembering the vetting he’d requested on Ana and her Husband, Rafi. ‘I got back from down south and my wife had a new friend. Just being too careful.’

‘Can’t be that,’ said Garrat. ‘Too careful, I mean. Anyway, the Homsi husband and wife checked out—no flags.’

Garrat smirked slightly and de Payns could sense a comment forming.

‘If a dame like that was pushed my way, I’d think twice about blowing the whistle on her, know what I mean? Maybe blow a whistle at her?’

De Payns felt embarrassed for the guy, but Garrat wasn’t picking up on it. He turned the computer monitor to face de Payns. ‘Now that lady could get undercover with me any day of the week, non?’