The sticker on the front of the file in front of de Payns read ALAMUT. That’s what they were calling the operation. He flipped the cover to reveal the administration sheet—dates, authorisation numbers, signatures and the collections of letters that indicated the DR was running Alamut, in pursuit of more intelligence requested by the Counter-Proliferation desk. The DGSE name and logo did not appear on any of the operational documents. If you didn’t know what all the letters and numbers meant, then you probably didn’t know what you were looking at. De Payns found himself mentioned under CDM—or chef de mission—his OT number inside crosshatches. The crosshatches meant his OT number was an official designation of the DGSE and it was the only identifier to be used during or in reference to the operation. There was a list of six designations on the administration sheet—the only person not in attendance was the DR director, Christophe Sturt.

Marie Lafont introduced Alamut as a reconnaissance and intelligence operation that revolved around a facility in Pakistan. Although the building had the words Pakistan Agricultural Chemical Company painted on the outside, among Western intelligence operatives it was called the MERC, a rough translation being Material and Energy Research Centre.

Lafont switched on the projector suspended from the ceiling above the table, which also dimmed the lights. The screen showed an aerial shot of the MERC—it looked like a compound of around fifteen squarish concrete buildings arranged in a campus around one main building.

‘The SVR has some great shots of the MERC compound,’ said Lafont, starting with a joke about the leakiness of Russia’s foreign intelligence service. ‘This is in the south-western outskirts of Islamabad, eighteen kilometres from the city. It’s serviced by a suburb nearby that we believe houses the scientists and engineers from MERC.’

She cycled through a few photos taken from different angles but none of them were very good. The 1990s-era buildings were contained in parklands and there was a security fence around the compound and a security gate.

‘Despite signing the Chemical Weapons Convention in 1993, which was supposed to prohibit Pakistan’s bioweapons ambitions,’ said Lafont, ‘we believe their bacteriological weapons program is reaching maturity, probably from this facility. The declared purpose of this compound is agricultural research, but we doubt that’s its primary role. For a start, it seems the people who work there have dedicated their lives to the centre.’

‘How do you mean?’ asked Briffaut.

‘Employees are obliged to report everything, from the briefest chance meeting to the most innocuous phone call.’

‘Sounds like intel rules,’ Briffaut noted. ‘So it’s run by the ISI?’

Lafont nodded. ‘The employee’s family and social life is monitored and they have to give up their passports for fifteen years. It’s certainly the ISI playbook.’

De Payns kept his eyes on Lafont, aware that some of the other attendees were now looking at him.