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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

‘You’re not looking well,’ she said. ‘I’m worried.’

He thought she might be starting a fight, but then he realised she was crying.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER

TWENTY-TWO

The Bunker had three sensitive compartmented information facilities. One SCIF was for executives, another for operational briefings and the third was effectively the entire basement level, thanks to its construction. The basement was home to the Team 9 technology spies and some of France’s most talented engineers, who built the gear that gave de Payns and his teams the edge on operations.

The basement SCIF was where de Payns conducted the meeting for his technology team, explaining how they were going to cleanse themselves without a support team. The Pearl Continental Hotel had a rear entrance and a standard eight-floor, elevator-hub layout. They would not be using cameras or microphones to counter the surveillance, relying instead on properly rehearsed legends. They were filmmakers, and the environment they established in their hotel would support their legend. The only IS they would perform would be conducted by Templar when he followed a person of interest to their home.

‘So, just the four of us?’ asked Brent, nodding slowly.

‘The legend is filmmaker, so there’s no illegal action, no need to go heavy,’ said de Payns, who’d been expecting some questions from the techs. ‘The only counter-measures will be three-point alignments in our rooms.’

‘And if we pick up a follower?’ asked Brent. ‘Pakistan can get nasty.’

‘We keep our legends and play the tourists without dropping our covers.’

‘That’s okay for a short period,’ said Brent.

De Payns agreed. ‘That’s why we’re on a tight timeline—arrive on a Sunday, spend all week doing the recon, and fly out on the Saturday. You’re right, our covers will only hold as long as the pretext holds.’

Templar leaped in to reinforce de Payns. ‘Just focus and play it out. Use the usual procedure for individual security in your rooms, but in public we’ll stay in character.’

They nodded and de Payns shifted to the ground game—on the whiteboard he drew the layout around the MERC campus, which featured one road from the facility’s security gate. At around eight hundred metres, the entry road hit the north–south public road at a T-junction. One hundred metres to the south of the T-junction was a service station and to the north was a small township, with shops and schools and a cafe. De Payns put crosses on the service station and cafe. He wanted to break up the way they travelled around; they would circulate in the car, but they couldn’t do that constantly, so there would have to be legitimate places that a film scouting crew would stop. There were tourist stops such as the Faisal Mosque, of course, and de Payns had a list of others. But they needed staging points for their reconnaissance activities that did not look like staging points.