As part of his legend, he was now a travelling businessman with a day off, which was a chance to do his own discreet reconnaissance of the équipement de ville that he’d learned by heart, but from afar. In the lobby of the Marriott he picked through the tourism packages and found one for the ancient ruins of Taxila. He booked a 9 a.m. pick-up and asked for a 6 a.m. wake-up call. Tourist interactions were a good thing, especially as he noted a mid-thirties local man sitting in the lobby, dressed conspicuously like an American and pretending to read a newspaper. He saw the second secret policeman as soon as he emerged onto the street. He was heavier than the man in the hotel foyer and wore a black leather sports coat and elastic-sided riding boots. De Payns relaxed—he’d spent so many years doing this dance of followers and targets that it almost felt normal. De Payns was fine with these public displays. The hotel time, spent alone, was when isolation crept in. Hotel time was when he wondered about Romy and the boys but couldn’t look at any photographs of them. Company operatives were searched before leaving to ensure they carried nothing of a personal nature that could tie them to their real life.

He ambled slowly down the street, stopping to buy Pakistani knick-knacks at a souk and joking with the vendors. After thirty minutes, the follower gave up, having been put to sleep by a man with absolutely no anomalies in his behaviour. It made for terrible movie scenes, but the truth of espionage was that the ability to put a follower to sleep had saved more people than kung fu. That, and a decent three-point alignment, and nothing worth finding in your luggage.

When he felt reasonably certain the secret police had lost interest, he walked the tourniquet that he’d rehearsed back in Paris, except he did it in reverse so that when he walked it for real, the followers would not recognise his route. The tourniquet covered a specific route from Raven’s apartment to the Marriott. It would begin with a green ‘ready’ gommette on a street landmark, which de Payns would only observe and not touch. Templar would have support team agents—‘candles’—placed along the fifteen-minute walking route, and if they detected no followers, the plan de support at the end of the route would show a green gommette. If the support team detected followers, they would place a red gommette; if the followers looked intent on arresting or physically grabbing de Payns, the gommette would be red with a black cross through it. This would be the signal to activate the emergency exfiltration, also created by the support team and rehearsed by de Payns in Paris.