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Back The Frenchman
Chapters (76)
  1. COVER PAGE
  2. ABOUT THE AUTHOR
  3. DEDICATION
  4. AMIN
  5. PARIS
  6. … TWO YEARS LATER
  7. CHAPTER ONE
  8. CHAPTER TWO
  9. CHAPTER THREE
  10. CHAPTER FOUR
  11. CHAPTER FIVE
  12. CHAPTER SIX
  13. CHAPTER SEVEN
  14. CHAPTER EIGHT
  15. CHAPTER NINE
  16. CHAPTER TEN
  17. CHAPTER ELEVEN
  18. CHAPTER TWELVE
  19. CHAPTER THIRTEEN
  20. CHAPTER FOURTEEN
  21. CHAPTER FIFTEEN
  22. CHAPTER SIXTEEN
  23. CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
  24. CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
  25. CHAPTER NINETEEN
  26. CHAPTER TWENTY
  27. CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
  28. CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
  29. CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
  30. CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
  31. CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
  32. CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
  33. CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
  34. CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
  35. CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
  36. CHAPTER THIRTY
  37. CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
  38. CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
  39. CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
  40. CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
  41. CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
  42. CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
  43. CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
  44. CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
  45. CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
  46. CHAPTER FORTY
  47. CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
  48. CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
  49. CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
  50. CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
  51. CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
  52. CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
  53. CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
  54. CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
  55. CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
  56. CHAPTER FIFTY
  57. CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
  58. CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
  59. CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
  60. CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
  61. CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
  62. CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
  63. CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
  64. CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
  65. CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
  66. CHAPTER SIXTY
  67. CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
  68. CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
  69. CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
  70. CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR
  71. CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE
  72. CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX
  73. CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN
  74. CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT
  75. CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE
  76. EPILOGUE

‘I’m thinking we have two photographers in the car, and they’re shooting for locations that we file to these folders,’ said Brent, indicating the Canon DSLR kits on the neighbouring desk.

‘Good,’ said de Payns, liking the attention to detail. When police or intel—or even just a hotel manager—asked an agent what they were doing and where they were going, the worst thing to do was hesitate. An operator in character had to have a pretext ready to go at any moment, and it had to come out quickly, because humans were the best readers of other humans—a flicker of hesitation, a roll of the eyes up to the left or a simple umm could bring the whole show undone. So all operations had to start with proper preparation.

‘And there’s this,’ said Brent, opening a folder and showing de Payns its contents—a distressed screenplay called Lake Forgiveness, with a pale blue cover sheet and two brass lugs in the holes of the screenplay paper. De Payns picked it up and saw the name of the screenwriter, David Keller, and in the bottom left corner the owner of the property, Capital Films, with the Paris address.

De Payns smiled, recognising the false ID. ‘So, Brent, you’re the writer? Where did we get the screenplay?’

‘Used screenwriter software, totally untraceable,’ Brent replied.

‘How so?’ asked de Payns.

‘Thierry wrote the code.’

De Payns looked at the squinting whiz-kid. ‘Code?’

‘Yeah,’ said Thierry. ‘I trained it to find screenplays stored in the cloud from a criterion that included father–son themes, Kashmir conflict, Muslim versus Hindu, dispossession and Islamophobia …’

‘You can do that?’

‘Sure. Then we bring it into a smart database and we use some AIs we wrote to assemble a ninety-minute screenplay—in French, of course. We changed a few names and did some editing, but basically the AI put it together.’

De Payns realised they were serious. ‘Is it any good?’

‘Sex, violence, war …’ said Thierry.

‘And a coming-out scene,’ said Brent. ‘It’s very tasteful.’

‘I’ll need to read it,’ said de Payns. ‘Can you courier it to the film company? What about the spinner?’