The last question was easily answered. Dr Yousef Bijar—chief scientist at Pakistan’s foremost bioweapons facility—was not going to provide access to the MERC. He was not cooperative, he would not be manipulated. He may have been brilliant but he was also a terrible human being and possibly a bit mad. The Company training had covered the basics of psychology and, in particular, extreme personalities. These people—whom de Payns had to understand well enough to befriend, manipulate and leverage—were often possessed of very strong intellects and intense personalities that could inspire a following. But they were often lonely, isolated, crushingly insecure, petty and vindictive. Their surfeit of confidence often came with life-altering paranoia, and their success was tempered with depravity. Timberwolf’s revelation about why he didn’t have children was chilling. De Payns had dealt with some terrible people in his time at the Company, but Timberwolf was unique—the first self-aware sociopath and science-criminal he had met. Most scientists and engineers who worked on weapons of mass destruction tried to justify themselves, claiming that their heightened intellect put them above morality, or that their inventions couldn’t be understood by normal people lacking their education. Even the scientists turned to working for France often clung to their delusions. But Timberwolf simply told him outright that he’d never bring children into a world where people like him were on the loose. De Payns could never prove it, but he had the strong impression that Timberwolf had guessed that the Frenchman opposite him had children. It was a deliberate provocation, guaranteed to haunt the parent who had to hear it.

What had de Payns done wrong? There wasn’t a list of mistakes to go over. France wanted access to the MERC, and they’d taken their best shot. They could have waited another month, another six months, another year. More intelligence, more reconnaissance and closer relations with Raven. And still they’d have run into Timberwolf, regardless of how long they delayed the contact.

Could anyone identify him? de Payns wondered. The answer was yes—Timberwolf, at least four bodyguards and his followers from the hotel had all seen de Payns up close, which was unfortunate but it was one of the drawbacks of ‘contact’. One thing was certain—de Payns would not return to the apartment in Montparnasse until he’d been thoroughly sanitised. The fate of Amin still haunted him—he would not bring the ISI to his family.

The final question was the fate of Raven. De Payns had to shake that thought from his head. He had a lot of problems to deal with before he could worry about an adversary.