He crossed the road, looking around like a tourist, willing the walk to be over and to see a green sticker on the bus stop hoarding. As he reached the other side of the road, he walked past a double-fronted store with hundreds of clothes racks, being picked over by seemingly half the women of Islamabad. Beside it was a cafe—this was the start of the tourniquet, and if de Payns was running it he’d have put a candle in that cafe to see who was following around the corner. But he didn’t look for his team. He walked past, flicking his smoke in the gutter, and shoved both hands into his jacket pockets. He wrapped his hands around the pieces of Nokia, not wanting to reassemble it in public for fear of being provocative.

This leg was two blocks. Two teenagers whooshed past him on skateboards and a family with a gaggle of loud and unhappy kids spilled out of a restaurant, the father using the universal body language of shut up and get in the car.

He got to the end of the final leg and stopped to cross on a traffic light. The first candle would now be watching him at this turn, while candle number two was heading for the plan de support, waiting for a radio instruction from Templar about which sticker to place on the bus stop siding. In reality, a good support team knew if their agent was being followed at the first candle. The next two were confirmation and double-confirmation. A well-managed tourniquet didn’t just establish surveillance, it gave the candles a chance to get a sense of the followers’ tactics and numbers.

He waited for the pedestrian light to turn green, his throat dry as he tried to swallow. It was a cool evening in Pakistan’s capital, but the back of his neck felt clammy. The light went green and he crossed, entering a less populated side street that curved slightly. The bus stop was on the other side of the road. He walked to the kerb and looked to his right and left. A van turned into the street and parked. He waited for a gap in the traffic, crossed the road and walked along the pavement, dodging the pedestrians. The bus stop loomed. Unlike European bus stop advertising, this one had no back-lighting. He created a side-step situation with a woman coming the other way, and ended up directly beside the plan de support. He looked down briefly, hoping for a green sticker.

But it was red, with a cross.

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

CHAPTER

FIFTY-TWO