The Frenchman, page 18
‘You lying bastard,’ laughed Mattieu Garrat, as de Payns retreated down the hallway. ‘That dame is everyone’s type!’
CHAPTER
THIRTY-THREE
De Payns started with a run around the Bunker, and just before 10 a.m. he entered the gym in the basement, where he was alone except for someone sitting on a weights bench peering at their phone. He slurped at the bubbler, grabbed some boxing gloves from the gear cupboard and went to the heavy bag. He hit the timer on the wall and it started counting down from three minutes. He took a boxer’s stance, balanced his weight and began slow, throwing jabs, hooks and straight-rights and, keeping his weight evenly distributed on the balls of his feet, bobbing and weaving, making his legs and hips throw the punches.
When the timer buzzed out, de Payns was panting, his legs almost jelly. He gasped for breath, wondering why he didn’t do this three times a week and keep his fitness at a constant level. He was psyching himself into completing two more three-minute rounds, when he heard a voice behind him.
‘Call that boxing?’
Turning, he found Shrek, dressed in a tight-fitting Brazilian jujitsu shirt and shorts.
‘I call that rusty,’ said de Payns.
‘Don’t tell me—you have your annual next month,’ said Shrek, openly amused. ‘I warned you, didn’t I? You can’t be a natural all your life, mon pote. Have to put in the work.’
‘Yeah, yeah,’ said de Payns. He looked like a one-time rugby player who’d once flown fighter jets, while Shrek looked like an academic who would take you to the cleaners in a game of chess. But Shrek had done the work and was a black belt and instructor in Wing Chun kung fu, and de Payns was getting through a pack a day and trying to get fit for his annual check-up. Shrek was right. Any natural ability with his fists probably belonged to a younger version of himself.
‘Come on, let’s see what you’ve got,’ said Shrek, walking to the gear cupboard.
‘I’m not doing one of your sparring sessions,’ said de Payns. ‘You kidding me? I can barely hold my own against the heavy bag right now.’
‘You’ll be fine,’ said Shrek, throwing a pair of black MMA gloves at de Payns. ‘I won’t hurt you.’
‘Yes you will,’ said de Payns, replacing the boxing gloves with the MMA mitts.
‘Okay, but I’ll spare your feelings,’ said Shrek, walking to the blue martial arts mats in the northern end of the gym. They kicked off their shoes and walked onto the hemp-packed mats, de Payns dreading what was about to come.
‘So, did I see you talking to Frasier the other day?’ asked de Payns innocently while he did his shoulder stretches. ‘Outside Briffaut’s office?’
Shrek smiled. ‘That’s fairly specific. Not a spy, are you?’
That was classic Shrek. Seamless dissembling wrapped up in humour. If de Payns pushed, it was he who had the problem.
‘I thought you were going for a pay rise—at least, that’s what everyone’s saying.’
Shrek’s eyes flashed. ‘Who’s every—?’
‘Ha! Got you!’ said de Payns. ‘Smug bastard.’
‘You prick,’ said Shrek, fist-touching with de Payns’ glove.
They stood back from one another and de Payns raised his hands in a defensive posture, crouching into a fighting stance. Shrek twisted sideways, backed up with fast reverse shuffle steps, and unleashed a back kick that caught de Payns in the solar plexus, lifting him off his feet and onto his arse. He coughed and looked up at Shrek.
‘So much for not hurting me,’ said de Payns, catching his breath and realising this was going to be a painful return to sparring.
‘I’m a spy,’ said Shrek, shrugging. ‘I lied.’
Leaping to his feet, de Payns regained his composure and effected a stance.
‘Oops,’ said Shrek. ‘Not going all jujitsu on me, are you?’
‘Bring it,’ said de Payns, and they circled one another, Shrek more careful now, knowing his sparring partner would go to the ground if he had the chance.
De Payns feigned a lunge to the torso, and when Shrek countered with a stamp kick and a punch combination, he was ready. He slipped the left-hand punch and blocked the right-hand with his elbow, extending his arm and barring Shrek’s twisted right elbow so Shrek was lifted off the ground. To avoid breaking his arm, Shrek twisted downwards and away, and de Payns used the momentum to take them both to the ground, where de Payns drove his forearm into Shrek’s neck and then positioned himself into a chokehold on his friend, which he tightened.
Having tapped out, Shrek stood and the two faced one another, the score one-all. They could have left it there, but Shrek raised an eyebrow, so de Payns called game on. Shrek let go a fast roundhouse kick into de Payns’ thigh then followed through with a punch. De Payns slipped inside the extended arm and hip-rolled him onto the mat, only for Shrek to roll free from the slamming and come to his feet again. De Payns was onto his partner as he regained balance, trying to hook him into another arm hold, but Shrek leaned away and lashed out with a right-foot side kick, hitting de Payns in the floating ribs. As Shrek followed through with a left-hand punch, de Payns ducked under it and threw his friend to the ground, pinning him once more with a forearm to the throat. This time, Shrek twisted away and slammed a fast left-hand elbow into de Payns’ right ear, stunning the larger man. They rolled away from each other and jumped back to their stances, panting heavily.
De Payns could feel the sweat running down between his shoulder blades. He was not in shape. ‘That’s not a bad warm-up, old man,’ said de Payns, trying to get oxygen.
‘Beats a stretch,’ said Shrek, voice rasping. ‘Let’s do this.’
He gasped as he reached for the wineglasses in the dresser. A rib on the left side of his chest felt like it wanted to spring straight out of his bruised skin.
‘You okay, honey?’ asked Romy, watching him from the sofa.
‘It’s fine,’ he said, pouring two glasses of riesling. ‘I sparred with Shrek.’
‘You always regret that,’ she said.
‘I didn’t have a choice. He cornered me in the gym.’
‘Where are you hurt? I have some tiger balm.’
‘Ribs, legs, stomach, arms,’ he said, delivering the glasses.
‘You need a massage,’ she said, sipping at the wine.
He noticed she was wearing the red trackpants that made her look like the genie from I Dream of Jeannie. ‘It might have to be one of those massages where I touch you at the same time,’ he said with a wink.
‘You get the boys out of the bath, and you have a deal, monsieur.’
De Payns put down his glass and leaped to his feet, crying with pain as a muscle gripped in his thigh.
‘Easy does it, tough guy,’ Romy said, chuckling. ‘We have a deal, remember?’
CHAPTER
THIRTY-FOUR
De Payns sat in the operations SCIF at the Bunker, listening to Brent and Templar run through their plans for establishing ‘environment’ around Anoush al-Kashi, now known as ‘Raven’. When the environment was established, de Payns would make the contact with Raven. The team leaders were selling the strength of their plans, assuring the chef de mission he would not end his days in a shallow grave in the Calmeynbos. To be certain of no counter-measures from the Pakistanis, the team would collect as much environment information as possible on Raven, including family and friends, workplace and leisure habits. The first phase had been establishing identity and a connection between the caller in Islamabad and the receiver in Mons. The full environment was deeper and had to give the Alamut team enough life detail to enable de Payns to infiltrate Raven’s world in a plausible manner.
Brent went through the tech plan. It included cameras at the entrance of Raven’s home, with a lens in the eye of a teddy bear in the back of a car, alternating with another hidden in the streetscape to monitor Raven’s building entry. Brent would have his people mark her car—a small silver BMW—with a device which allowed for the tracking of the target’s cell phone traffic as well as vehicular movement. They now knew she used Gmail on a Toshiba laptop, and intercepting her email traffic was not difficult. Brent’s team had already cracked the target’s two phones, which were being listened to, and the woman’s activity on social networks was being observed.
Templar also had enough people to rotate three teams of male and female agents who would take turns dividing and squaring Raven’s different routes, whether it was taking her daughters to school, bringing them home in the afternoon, going to dance classes or travelling to her translation appointments, including regular visits to the GrowTEK offices. Using several teams to divide and square the target’s routes would give them accurate data but without the risk of easy detection should there be an ISI overwatch program in Mons.
‘We’ll make her mail,’ said Templar, meaning her mail to the apartment would be cleared and opened and returned when she wasn’t around. ‘We’ve already cut our own key to the foyer. Also, we still haven’t seen the husband, but he’s part of this environment. We’ll identify him as well as all her contacts.’
They talked through the logistics of it. A decent environment could take a month and the support teams would have a certain amount of rotation—which would mean travelling back to Paris—but the surveillance would be occurring at all hours, so the teams would have to disperse to hotels and pensions, pay in cash and assemble where their gig started each day or night. De Payns noted the sombre atmosphere—they’d been in Islamabad together, escaping detection, but this was slightly different. They were now surrounding a target who had a direct connection to a VIP from a Pakistani bioweapons facility. If there was counter-surveillance around her it would be professional and ruthless.
‘It’ll be fully sanitised,’ said Templar, nodding. ‘They’ll need a Ouija board to know we’re in town.’
When Templar and Brent had left, de Payns turned his focus to the fictive ID of Sébastien Duboscq. Duboscq was not a new ID for de Payns; he’d used it around Europe and in the United States. The legend was that of a pharmaceutical consultant through his company AlphaPharma Consulting, which had offices in Paris —so named because a generic corporate moniker made it harder for opposing intelligence agencies to search for the owners of it. He’d done monthly ‘gardening’ of his corporate front, including visits to his office in the ninth arrondissement, email responses to prospective clients and attending conferences in Germany and the Netherlands. Duboscq’s approach would be a request for Raven’s translation services. He wanted to ensure his clients in Pakistan and some neighbouring Stans could understand his website, so he needed Urdu and Pashto versions. His Sébastien Duboscq persona was well dressed and smooth. He dressed in smart suits and good shoes and appeared unconcerned by money. De Payns had gone through all the photography from Mons and, judging by her expensive taste in handbags and accessories, Raven’s MICE might include ego. She looked like a bourgeois subcontinental woman who might be persuaded to step up to some romance with a sexy Parisian professional. He made a note to get a better haircut and perhaps wear a men’s fragrance … Paco Rabanne, maybe—something that suggested Sébastien Duboscq might be up for some fun but wasn’t desperate.
He took the Metro east, had a shower at the Company flat and selected the dark blue suit in his locker’s wardrobe, matching it with a new white shirt and a pair of brown Bowen shoes from England. Placing his Alec de Payns collateral in one manila envelope, he poured out the Duboscq wallet, effects and phone from another. He put on a slim gold watch and slipped a vintage-looking gold confirmation ring onto his finger.
The Metro journey to the Duboscq apartment took twelve minutes, during which he assembled Sébastien’s Nokia. He cleared the mail at the foyer of his vacant apartment above a restaurant on Rue Godot de Mauroy, and then crossed the road to the offices of AlphaPharma Consulting. He climbed the stairs and entered the tiny serviced space. There was a desk with two chairs and a sofa, and a phone and computer on the desk. Not much, but enough.
He turned on the lights and moved around. He could hear the insurance broker down the hallway yelling into the phone. He sat behind the desk, turned on the computer and leaned back in the cut-price executive chair as he tried to get into his Sébastien Duboscq mindset. He had two of the best field teams in Europe, led by Templar, and they already had Mons wired. If they burrowed deep into Raven’s private life and could confirm the environment was clean of ISI minders and overwatch, de Payns could be there in two weeks. His thoughts drifted to Operation Falcon and the disastrous interview with DGS about the three-million-euro passports. It meant Palermo was still lingering, and Frasier still hadn’t released a final report, meaning there was nothing to give Manerie. He wondered again why it had turned so bad in Sicily, pondering the mystery of the sleek, well-groomed man on the ferry. Had it really been Murad? And if so, what had dragged him out of hiding into what was essentially a field matter? Murad allegedly had ties to Osama bin Laden’s executive and he was suspected of financing sleeper cells in Paris, London, Madrid and Frankfurt. And he’d emerged from his safe haven—wherever that might be—to personally oversee Michael Lambardi on the ferry and then at the bar? Why?
Heels clicked on the parquet floor outside his office and then stopped.
‘Sébastien?’ came a woman’s voice. ‘You there, chéri?’
‘Claire! Come in,’ said de Payns, reverting to Sébastien Duboscq, the suave single guy.
The frosted-glass door swung inwards and Claire, the blonde employee who did ‘all the work’ at the insurance brokers, leaned on the doorjamb. She wore a dark pencil skirt and a loose red blouse that looked like it was meant to conceal her curves but failed.
‘Thought that was you,’ she said, pulling a soft pack of cigarettes from her waistband. ‘You been off adventuring again, Seb?’
‘If you call hard work “adventuring”. In this business the clients are everywhere,’ said de Payns, accepting a smoke. ‘I never stop travelling. You know how it is.’
‘Poof!’ she said, dismissing de Payns’ complaints. ‘Give me one week as a man, I’ll take it. Running around out there, doing whatever I want.’
‘It’s not that great,’ said de Payns, accepting her light.
‘Bullshit,’ said the blonde, as she lit her own smoke. ‘Only a man would ever complain about his own freedom.’
CHAPTER
THIRTY-FIVE
Before heading to his 9.30 a.m. meeting, De Payns made breakfast for the boys and watched SpongeBob with them. They talked about girls and bullies as they made the waffles—‘Papa’s way’ with extra sugar and cinnamon—and de Payns lowered his voice when Patrick wanted to know when he could play rugby.
‘Why rugby?’ he asked, not wanting Romy to hear the conversation—she hated rugby. ‘I thought you liked soccer?’
‘You played rugby,’ said Patrick. ‘I saw your school photos.’
‘Okay, we’ll ask your mother,’ said de Payns, as he poured maple syrup.
‘I already did,’ said Patrick.
‘And?’ asked de Payns.
Patrick smiled, ‘She said never. You’ll have to tell her, Papa.’
‘Oh, I have to tell her?’ replied de Payns, laughing. ‘How do you think that will turn out?’
‘Maybe ask her nicely?’ suggested Oliver, eyes wide.
By the time they’d watched two SpongeBob episodes, de Payns didn’t want to move. In the first week of September, Patrick would be back at school and Oliver would be starting his first year. He remembered when Oliver couldn’t talk; now he’d be learning to read and write. He was conscious of the years racing by, not purely in age but in family time. While he got lost in his latest subterfuge and manipulation, his sons did their karate and played football and hung out watching SpongeBob Square Pants—proud of the fact they could follow it in English. He thought about his family and wished he could walk on a higher moral ground. In his world, family was leverage; family was a weak point to be exploited, and given that most rational people would do anything to spare their families, kids were part of the game. He’d avoided facing up to it until the night he’d returned from Palermo and Romy had asked: That’s what you do to people? Get to their families?
Yes, he thought, as he sipped on his coffee in front of the cartoons. That’s what I do.
He kissed the boys, suggested they let their mother have a lie-in, and slipped out of the door just before eight-thirty.
They sat in Dominic Briffaut’s office, de Payns and Mattieu Garrat briefing the head of Y Division on why they felt the operational environment was ready to be upgraded to contact. The three-week environment phase, run by Templar, had not disclosed anything special about Raven apart from the fact that in emails and phone calls she criticised her husband a lot, and she wished for more freedom. The phone calls to the mystery man at the MERC had been monitored and played back for the cryptographers at the Cat, who couldn’t find a code in the dull conversations about shopping, traffic and school lunches. It was not unusual in countries such as Pakistan and Iran for classified government workers to train their family and friends never to ask about their work or refer to it. So Raven wasn’t asking, and the person of interest at the MERC wasn’t telling. Briffaut had a file of the transcripts between Raven and the POI, and he flipped to a random page which contained the conversation:
POI: How are you?
RAVEN: Good.
POI: How are the kids?
RAVEN: Happy.
POI: How is the weather?
RAVEN: Fine.
POI: How is work?
RAVEN: Busy.
Briffaut sighed. ‘This is it?’
De Payns nodded. ‘The conversations are so banal that we should at least consider the possibility that Raven is trained.’
Briffaut shrugged at that possibility. In the intel game you also had to accept that people conducted uninspiring communications.
They went through the photographic surveillance, which demonstrated Raven’s ego, a potential MICE leverage. She had a pretty face and a voluptuous body. In one of the shots, she wore silky parachute pants and a tight bodice that was less modest than a typical Pakistani woman would wear.
