‘You’re slow for a Frenchman,’ Lambardi teased when de Payns joined him on the other side several seconds later, to the accompaniment of a loud dose of Sicilian horns. Lambardi set off again, veering left down a street on which waiters and accordion players smoked cigarettes outside cafes loud with tourists—he was heading for de Payns’ office.

De Payns carried no comms or tracking device. He would just have to follow where Lambardi led, trusting in his mission team to have his back.

‘We can settle this tonight,’ said Lambardi as they turned into the side street where de Payns’ office was located. This was not the way de Payns had planned to do the handover. The operation was intended to culminate at Lambardi’s apartment, where de Payns would deliver the passports and record the footage.

‘I thought we were going to the bar,’ said de Payns.

Lambardi kept walking. ‘We’ll get the passports and I’ll get the money for you.’

De Payns grabbed the Italian by the shoulder. ‘You know how it goes, Michael. We do it my way, or we don’t do it.’

Lambardi shrugged his hand away. ‘You’ll get three million euros for those passports, but I don’t carry that kind of money on me.’

‘So what’s the point in fetching the passports now?’ asked de Payns as they neared the suite of offices.

‘Murad will have the money,’ Lambardi told him. ‘He’ll love this deal.’

De Payns was startled. ‘Murad?!’ he hissed, not wanting to say the name of the Sayef Alber commander too loudly. ‘He’s in Palermo tonight?’

‘Sure,’ said Lambardi.

‘Where are you meeting him?’ asked de Payns.

‘You kidding me?’ the Italian slurred. ‘He finds me.’

Bar Luca was a bar-cafe in Palermo’s old town that had started life as a wine merchant’s warehouse six hundred years ago. It was dimly lit, low in the ceiling and heavy on the beams. But the lighting meant its sandstone walls glowed golden. Hanging from the ceiling beams were Knights Templar and Knights of St John paraphernalia, a tribute to the era when the fighting orders ruled the eastern Mediterranean. De Payns scanned the bar as he took a seat at Lambardi’s favourite table, in front of the 1960s Wurlitzer jukebox. When they’d first visited Bar Luca more than a month ago, de Payns had panicked slightly, thinking Lambardi knew his real name and its obvious connection to the Knights Templar—Hugh de Payns, founder and first Grand Master of the Order of the Knights Templar, back in the 1100s. But Lambardi wasn’t interested in Crusader lineage nor the de Payns family’s part in it. He was there for the table service—the owner, Luca, employed good-looking ladies and Lambardi liked one of them in particular.