The DGSE detained the Syrian politician at Évreux Air Base while they decided what to do with him. New assets who backwashed their histories in order to appear ‘clean’ to the Company were usually executed or fed to their rival factions. But before he could be dumped, he was found hanged by his bedsheets in his cell. Shrek had been the last person to visit him and the legend grew of the genius academic who’d hypnotised the Syrian into suicide, making him believe it was the only way he could spare his family. Mind control, puppet mastery—the man who could peel the onion from the inside. Shrek had never confirmed it, not even to de Payns or the rest of the clan, which included Templar and his other close colleagues, Rocket and Renan. He’d smile like a shark, wink and say something like, Who wouldn’t want a power like that?

Shrek was inner circle, blood brother. Fingering him for treason was outrageous.

De Payns moved with the summer tourist crowds at Orly, wearing jeans and a polo shirt, and carrying a small backpack across one shoulder. He caught the Orlyval shuttle train to Antony station and waited a few minutes before the fast RER train arrived. He took the first carriage and looked down the platform to see who was watching, jumping sideways into the carriage only when the doors hissed. He left the train at St Michel–Notre Dame and emerged into a mild summer’s day in Paris. Crossing the road with the crowds he reached the left bank of the Seine and dropped down onto the Port de Montebello, the riverside walkway that might have been the best-used river path in the world. He headed east, making for the Pont de la Tournelle. To his left, across the river, was the burned-out Notre-Dame cathedral—now covered in a massive tarpaulin—and in front of him were swirling tourists, the gendarmes moving among them to ward off the pickpockets and bag-snatchers who plagued this part of Paris.

A Canadian woman waved her smartphone at de Payns and made the international gesture of Can you take our picture? De Payns smiled and took the phone, walking around the newlyweds so he could catch a glimpse of who was behind him. He smiled, took the shot with the cathedral as the backdrop and wished them luck.