They walked with a space of thirty metres between them, the man in front dressed in jeans and a black T-shirt with no markings. They headed north, taking a zigzag route through the streets of Paris, playing what the Company called ‘the tourniquet’, a game of turnstiles where the job of the officer running the tourniquet was to clear the participant through at least three DGSE checkpoints by two operatives from the Company, called ‘Candles’. The Candles were in radio communication with each other via small wireless earpieces, and their job at each checkpoint of the pedestrian route was to watch for followers. When de Payns was cleared of followers, the tourniquet vehicle would swoop and pick up their officer.

After fifteen minutes the man leading him took a right off the Rue de Charonne, and de Payns found himself in a narrow lane with an idling silver Citroën C-series. The man with the green cap kept walking and the rear left door of the car popped open. De Payns got in and the car accelerated down the lane.

There was a red-headed man de Payns didn’t know in the passenger seat. At the wheel was his friend Gael, better known as Templar.

‘Nice work, my friend,’ said Templar as they emerged from the lane into the mainstream traffic.

‘How are you?’ asked de Payns, not using his name. ‘Where are we going?’

‘To see the boss,’ said Templar.

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER

EIGHT

De Payns and Templar kept it light during the eight-minute drive to the Cat. Templar—a former Marines paratrooper—could have used the Périphérique, the ring road around Paris, to get them to their meeting faster, but instead he’d taken a zigzag route around the Père Lachaise cemetery, and from his old friend’s mutterings into a micro earpiece, de Payns guessed a motorbike was behind them and doing parallels. De Payns didn’t know the man in the passenger seat and he took his cue from Templar: Quand tu ne sais pas, fermes ta gueule. When you don’t know, shut up.