De Payns sat in the operations SCIF at the Bunker, listening to Brent and Templar run through their plans for establishing ‘environment’ around Anoush al-Kashi, now known as ‘Raven’. When the environment was established, de Payns would make the contact with Raven. The team leaders were selling the strength of their plans, assuring the chef de mission he would not end his days in a shallow grave in the Calmeynbos. To be certain of no counter-measures from the Pakistanis, the team would collect as much environment information as possible on Raven, including family and friends, workplace and leisure habits. The first phase had been establishing identity and a connection between the caller in Islamabad and the receiver in Mons. The full environment was deeper and had to give the Alamut team enough life detail to enable de Payns to infiltrate Raven’s world in a plausible manner.

Brent went through the tech plan. It included cameras at the entrance of Raven’s home, with a lens in the eye of a teddy bear in the back of a car, alternating with another hidden in the streetscape to monitor Raven’s building entry. Brent would have his people mark her car—a small silver BMW—with a device which allowed for the tracking of the target’s cell phone traffic as well as vehicular movement. They now knew she used Gmail on a Toshiba laptop, and intercepting her email traffic was not difficult. Brent’s team had already cracked the target’s two phones, which were being listened to, and the woman’s activity on social networks was being observed.

Templar also had enough people to rotate three teams of male and female agents who would take turns dividing and squaring Raven’s different routes, whether it was taking her daughters to school, bringing them home in the afternoon, going to dance classes or travelling to her translation appointments, including regular visits to the GrowTEK offices. Using several teams to divide and square the target’s routes would give them accurate data but without the risk of easy detection should there be an ISI overwatch program in Mons.

‘We’ll make her mail,’ said Templar, meaning her mail to the apartment would be cleared and opened and returned when she wasn’t around. ‘We’ve already cut our own key to the foyer. Also, we still haven’t seen the husband, but he’s part of this environment. We’ll identify him as well as all her contacts.’