‘Big Mercedes is seven back,’ mumbled de Payns as Templar stopped the Nissan north of the T-junction and left it idling. Templar kept his eye on the rear-view mirror and Brent tapped on his Toshiba keyboard, switching the machine to spinner mode. No one turned back to look.

‘And … we’re go,’ said Templar, hitting the indicator stalk and easing into the traffic. As they hit the flow of vehicles, the black Mercedes was three cars in front of them.

De Payns couldn’t waste time on the small fry. The Company wanted to be in the top-secret layer, not in the slops. They needed a vehicle belonging to a senior person, someone with status and probably travelling with bodyguards, and the most obvious vehicle was the black Mercedes.

‘What do we have on the radar?’ asked de Payns, not taking his eyes off the Mercedes.

‘Thirteen IMSIs and growing,’ said Brent. ‘Make that eighteen.’

When a cell phone was switched on, it registered with the closest cell tower it could find: the spinner. After ten minutes of driving north, most of the IMSI numbers had dropped off the spinner’s list as cars turned off the main road and connected to another cell tower.

Fifteen minutes after they started their hunt, there was only one vehicle—a white VW van—between the Alamut crew and the black Mercedes, and the spinner had just four IMSI numbers that had stayed connected since the MERC.

‘That van come from the MERC?’ asked Templar as they backed off slightly.

‘I think it was already on the main road,’ said Thierry.

The question was potentially important. If there was a senior person from the MERC in the black Mercedes-Benz, did he or she have a bodyguard. And if so, were they in the car or were they following in a van? It might not mean much the first time the team followed the black Mercedes, but if there were bodyguards in another vehicle, they’d eventually pick up the team’s Nissan. The white van’s indicator blinked on the right side and turned off. They now had three IMSI numbers at the top of the spinner screen and they pulled back, allowing a car to get between the Nissan and the Mercedes.

It was getting towards dusk and the car’s interior suddenly filled with red flashing lights. Templar swore under his breath and pulled onto the gravel shoulder of the road, waiting as an ambulance roared past. De Payns pointed his pen ahead through the windscreen, getting his mind back on the job.

The traffic sorted itself out again, and Templar got the Nissan positioned two cars back from the Mercedes. One of the cars in front of them turned off, and there were three IMSI numbers at the top of the list.

‘All the cell phones are probably in the Mercedes,’ said Brent from the back seat. ‘They’re all connecting.’

‘Scientist and two bodyguards?’ suggested Templar.