‘It didn’t,’ stammered Manerie. ‘I mean, it’s not my bank account. Jesus Christ, three million?!’

‘The statement says you received the money and immediately sent half of it to Murad’s bank in Munich,’ said the Colonel. ‘You two thought you could arrive here, with these financial arrangements with the DGSE, and you’d play with us without any consequences?’

Manerie looked at Murad and Murad stared back, disbelieving.

‘We’ve been set up,’ said Murad.

‘Or you’re setting up Pakistan, perhaps?’ replied the Colonel. ‘You wouldn’t be the first.’

The Colonel nodded and a big hand slapped tape across Manerie’s mouth. Murad said a final no as he was re-gagged. The two men looked at each other, bug-eyed and hopeless; they’d been fucked by the French.

‘Well, gentlemen,’ said Dr Bijar. ‘I’m sorry to say that we’ll need all of your bank details, and full disclosure about your deals with the DGSE. This is the minimum you can do in hope of forgiveness—and a quick death.’

Manerie tried to reason through his duct tape, his voice reduced to pathetic whining. Across from him, Murad’s chair wobbled in its bolts as he tried to move his body against his constraints.

‘Colonel,’ said Bijar, rising to leave, ‘I’ll let you play with your toys, but please keep in mind that I need their main organs for my tests. Farewell, my friends.’

‘That’s fine,’ said the Colonel. ‘I have just advised our allies of the DGSE that we had to arrest their terrorist in the context of our cooperation. I invited them to debrief him, but they won’t be here for twenty-four hours and, as usual, they might arrive too late to talk to him.’

The black-shirted thug with the power drill revved it and aimed the power tool at Manerie’s left ankle bone. The drill slowed slightly as the bit dug through the flesh and into bone, but then it sped up again as it cut through.

Before he passed out for the first time, Philippe Manerie saw the Colonel flick a piece of flesh from his trousers. Then his own muffled cries for mercy filled his ears and drowned out the screaming drill.

CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE

CHAPTER

SIXTY-NINE

The baton strike had broken two ribs, and he had a scorch burn down the inside of his left thigh, where Murad had tried to shoot him at the Metro. De Payns was on a two-week stand-down but Briffaut wanted a report from him. So he travelled straight from the hospital to the Bunker, via an IS, and sat down to write his final reports on Operations Falcon and Alamut.

He had just started writing when Briffaut stuck his head in the door.