Briffaut aimed a laser pointer at Islamabad on the map. ‘Here’s the MERC. We have no proof that this is where the bioweapon comes from, but we have two people connected to what we believe was produced there.’

Briffaut nodded at Lafont and three pictures appeared on the screen. ‘This is the man we know as Murad,’ he said, pointing to the grainy CCTV picture on the left. ‘A Sayef Albar commander who has pledged to position the terror group in the heart of Europe and who was trying to buy five French passports to do just that.’

Briffaut moved his pointer to the middle picture. ‘This is Michael Lambardi, also known as Commodore. Commodore was a Sicilian migration consultant working for Murad, and was killed by him. Fine traces of weaponised clostridium were discovered on chlorine granules in a Palermo warehouse leased by Commodore’s brother, David Lambardi.’

Briffaut moved to the final picture. ‘This is Yousef Bijar. We call him Timberwolf. He’s the head scientist at the MERC in Islamabad. When Aguilar slipped out of the city after a failed dinner date, Timberwolf received a call from a voice that we believe belongs to Murad, based on intercepts over the years. Murad knew Aguilar’s pseudo, and that he works for us. This phone call to Timberwolf is crucial—the MERC is an ISI-run facility.’

Briffaut paused. ‘The conclusion is that the MERC, under the auspices of the ISI, is making a bioweapon, and a client organisation of the ISI—Sayef Albar—is going to use it in Europe.’

Everyone present nodded in agreement.

‘The question is,’ said Briffaut, ‘where is this bioweapon, how much of it do they have and what is Sayef Albar planning to do with it?’

When they broke for the team to make their phone calls, de Payns grabbed a coffee and went back to his office with Shrek. They got the DR office at the Cat on speaker, and asked for an update on the outgoing sea and air freight logs from Palermo. But nothing really stood out. The biggest problem was the size of what they were looking for. A small canister of the weaponised clostridium could be carried by a person in their hand luggage and introduced to a small water supply. The test uses of the gas gangrene were conducted in local sources of drinking water, targeting village populations. But what would a bigger attack look like, and how would the terrorists transport the bacteriological material without being detected? Shrek’s report described the Palermo warehouse as being about thirty metres by twenty. You didn’t need a warehouse of that size for a few canisters carried by couriers. The ETX clostridium that had been transhipped through the Palermo warehouse had to be much bigger than a few capsules in a rucksack. Sayef Albar would not take the risk of renting such a large space unless they needed it.