‘Macho?’ echoed de Payns. ‘You kidnapped my wife and kids. Nice work, tough guy.’

Valley looked at his smoke, nodding slowly. ‘Not my finest hour. I was telling the boys I was going to wrap it up and we were all going home. And then Hurricane Templar struck. I was going to drive them home, I swear. But that’s no excuse.’

Briffaut leaped in. ‘Can we be clear? Murad is ISI?’

Valley nodded. ‘He contracts to them. He created a group called Sayef Albar. He’s bad news.’

Briffaut touched his earpiece. ‘Do you know Murad’s name?’

‘Murad is a pseudo, as far as I can tell,’ said Valley. ‘I never met him, only saw him from a distance. He doesn’t like to be looked at.’

‘Where did Manerie do meetings with him?’

‘Never in Pakistan. A few meetings were in France, Spain, Italy, but mainly they talked on démarqué phones. Manerie once told me that Murad hides in plain sight. He has a firm in a European city. Don’t ask me which one.’

‘What’s Murad planning?’

Valley shrugged. ‘Do I look like the mastermind?’

‘Let me run through some names, tell me what you know—Yousef Bijar.’

‘Never heard of it.’

‘Anoush al-Kashi.

‘Blank.’

‘Michael Lambardi.’

‘Lambardi?’ Valley laughed. ‘Shit, he was a dumb bastard. Murad goes to contact Lambardi on the ferry and fucking Aguilar is staring straight at him. That got the feathers flying.’

De Payns couldn’t help himself. ‘Lambardi died for that.’

Valley sneered. ‘Lambardi was trying to make three million euros for trafficking terrorists with real French passports. Sorry for the hurt feelings.’

‘You know they tried to kill Aguilar that night?’ asked Briffaut.

‘I heard that later. Shrek came up with some fancy pen-work.’

‘Okay, David Lambardi,’ said Briffaut.

‘Owns a real estate firm in Palermo—Palermo Commercial Realty. He’s a useful idiot.’

‘Useful to whom?’

‘Murad ran his European logistics out of the firm’s systems, I believe. Some payments were made out of there, too. Not the big ones, but the day-to-day running of Sayef Albar.’

‘How did he do that?’

‘He had a very smart woman working there …’

Briffaut leaned in as Valley stumbled. ‘Who’s the woman, Jim?’

Valley went blank. They’d touched a nerve.

‘She close to you?’

‘She was,’ said Valley, sighing. ‘Her real name’s Heidi Winnen. We sort of … you know?’

‘What was her role?’

‘They always had things coming in and going out. People had to be paid, all the paperwork needed an address. I don’t know the details, but she ran all of that.’

De Payns came in, ‘Winnen’s her real name? What other names did she use?’

‘She goes by Gina Bolaro,’ said Valley. ‘I actually really liked her, you know?’