They drove north in the traffic, doing around seventy kilometres an hour. The car was silent. On the left was a mid-sized petrol station, with a yellow awning featuring Urdu lettering across it. De Payns could see a small mini-mart and some tables and chairs at the side. Ten seconds further north, the turn-off for the MERC was on their right. The road went straight for several hundred metres, through low scrublands, and terminated at the MERC gatehouse. Having driven for five minutes past the MERC road, through a small section of shops and homes, Templar looped back and they stopped at the shops and parked where they could see the T-junction. They went into the cafe, bought coffees and small homemade biscuits, then left the small township and spent the day practising their legends. In the afternoon, they looped back to the area. They were trying to ascertain knock-off time at the MERC, when they’d have a wave of vehicles to assess and surveil.

The four of them watched the road. At 4.03 p.m., a long-wheelbase Fiat van coming from the south turned into the road and drove towards the complex. A lightweight truck with a closed-in box on the back made the same manoeuvre at 4.09.

‘So it’s not four o’clock,’ said Brent.

Their research suggested that government departments finished work between four and six, but not on the half-hour. And government employees in Pakistan finished work en masse; there was none of the flexi-time that operated in the bureaucracies of Western Europe.

For the next thirty minutes they drove around the area playing their legend, taking photographs and making notes, and keeping away from the T-junction. They had to frequent the area sufficiently to find a pattern, but not so they’d look like they were spending too much time in one place.

They timed their return for shortly after five, making a northbound pass at 5.04 and then a southbound one at 5.08. Still no flood of cars.

‘So it’s six,’ said de Payns.

They kept the atmosphere light and stayed in character with banter about the movie as they took a long circular route west of the MERC. Approaching from the south shortly before six o’clock, they drove straight to the service station where they made a show of getting out and stretching, while Templar filled the car with petrol. Brent went into the small coffee shop on the side of the service station and bought four bottles of water. As he emerged, a small green Peugeot sedan arrived at the T-junction from the MERC, turned into the traffic and headed north, past the cafe where they’d bought coffee that morning. It was 6.02 p.m.

‘Keen to get out of there,’ said Brent, sitting beside Thierry, who started the IMSI spinner in his laptop. ‘Must have Mustafa Briffaut as a manager.’