De Payns nodded to them as he passed the LandCruiser and started his long walk back to the hotel. It was a moderately populated street, just north of the main CBD and west of the diplomatic enclave. He realised the locals were taking one look at the LandCruiser parked beside the Mercedes before electing to walk on the opposite side of the street.

His job was to follow the tourniquet, giving his team—his candles—a chance to find his followers and give him their verdict on the plan de support final. If he reached the advertising on the bus stop and there was a red sticker with a cross drawn through it, de Payns was to move towards the hotel as if nothing was wrong. This was the critical part—there would be no rupture through the established passage obligé, no car chases. There’d be no bang-bang, as the Company referred to the use of firearms. If he was being followed, he would have to do one of the most difficult things an OT could be asked to do. He’d have to walk with the mannerisms of a man who was not stressed, not scared and who was not taking every step as if a van was about to stop beside him and scoop him up. He would have to behave as if everything was fine, as if he wasn’t in Islamabad and the head of the bioweapons program had not all-but accused him of being a spy. The followers would have to be put to sleep.

He walked, taking a pack of smokes out of his windbreaker and lighting one. He consciously kept any preparedness out of his step; he knew that a certain stride was what Templar usually clocked when he was picking those in the game out of a crowd. That and their footwear.

At the first main junction, he turned right at the pedestrian lights and was now walking at ninety degrees to the road that Raven’s flat was on. It was 6.27 p.m. local time as de Payns passed a corner cafe on the other side of the road with a noticeboard outside—the starting plan de support—and saw the green gommette. The tourniquet was ready to be played, which meant Templar and the team were in place and ready. It calmed him a bit.

He kept walking slow and easy, while his heart flipped like a pancake. He readied to cross the road to go west again on the cross street, glancing left as he did to see if there was oncoming traffic. He was quite sure he saw a green van pull into a no parking zone eighty metres back the way he’d come. He had to stop looking for things that weren’t there, he told himself.