‘Bonjour,’ he said, and asked de Payns for a light in French. De Payns tensed—the stranger looked military, from the bull neck and regulation haircut to the way he held his cigarette long-wise inside his furled fist.

‘Do I know you?’ asked de Payns, smiling.

‘Manerie wants to see you,’ said the man, serious but not threatening.

De Payns’ mind spun. He only knew one Manerie, and if this was the same Manerie it was not a friendly call. ‘And you are?’

‘I’m the help,’ said the man. ‘But you can call me Jim.’

‘Maybe you have the wrong person?’ suggested de Payns, scanning the apron for vans.

‘If you’re Aguilar, I have the right person.’ This was de Payns’ pseudo, only ever used inside the Company.

‘Aggi Hula?’ echoed de Payns, keeping the smile on his face. ‘You Algerian?’

‘No, but I’m used to getting my way.’

‘I bet you say that to all the boys.’

‘The director won’t see the humour in that,’ said Jim. ‘But maybe I will when you’re in the back of a van with a hood over your head, and I’m reminding you that I tried to be nice.’

De Payns decided this Jim had definitely been a paratrooper, perhaps in the Legion. He smiled and tossed the cigarette lighter to the bulky Frenchman.

‘Director will meet you at your seat in ten minutes,’ said Jim, lighting his smoke and tossing the lighter back to de Payns. Then he walked away. As far as tradecraft went, it wasn’t bad. A watcher would have seen a fellow smoker getting a light and moving on. He didn’t linger and monologue. His body language said ‘stranger’.

De Payns stayed calm as Jim moved out of sight. Manerie meant Philippe Manerie, the director of the security side of the DGS—the internal affairs division of the Company. The DGS was feared by de Payns and his fellow officers because it represented the potential for either a speedy end to one’s career or a long stay in one of the DGS’s basements after passage through a French security court. France was haughty and somewhat cynical about the ways of the world, but she abhorred a traitor. There were French people of a certain age who would spit on your shoes for the mention of Vichy France. The DGS represented that attitude and more.

De Payns was tired and questions bounced in his mind—was Jim real or bullshit? Was this actually DGS or someone from another service trying to make him talk? An approach, or a test? The kind of test the DGS performed often.