Daniel bolted backwards in his chair when he heard ‘Yggdrasil’, and both Rifat and Rama were alarmed by the suddenness of his reaction. The old man kept mumbling then suddenly stopped, held his left hand out in from of him with the palm facing upwards with the stone in the centre, opened his eyes and spoke…
“He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith; To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God, and will give him a white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it.”
Jnyandeep grabbed Daniel with his right hand and pulled him towards him. “Do you believe in faith? Do you have faith? Do you have faith in yourself?”
Daniel was taken aback at what Jnyandeep was asking him. He was completely caught off-guard and didn’t know what to say. He was at a complete and utter loss for words and could only blink at the old man and then his two companions who were just staring back at him.
9.13am – 10th April, present day.
Montaillou, Rue du Village, Montségur, Occitanie, France.
The Prosopon™ software, having finished capturing all the facial segments that it could recover from all of the various highlighted photographic images, had completed in-filling the pixels of a blank silhouette of a face on the computer screen. The face was now in-filled to the hairline level but hadn’t been coloured or designed. Pixel by pixel, the software had augmented the silhouette with thousands of segments and then blended, merged, layered and overlapped them with each other to create a digitised, almost 3-dimensional, interpretation of the facial features and physiognomy of the third man obscured in the original photographs. Markus Bruscante tinkered around with some of the special effects that the software provided for use until he was satisfied that he had a suitable image to pass on to his contact, 330 miles away in Lyon. He began to chuckle to himself as he placed the finished image, along with sharpened copies of the other two men into an e-mail he was preparing for his contact. He began writing a text message addressed to his contact: ‘My brother, do you desire to give yourself to our faith?’ pressed send and waited. A few minutes passed by and Markus answered his telephone on the third ring.
“I am about to send an e-mail to you which has three photographs attached. I require you to identify the three individuals and then report back to me with their identities and relevant information attached. I cannot stress how urgent this information is required and you cannot fail.”
“I receive it from God, from you, and from the Church.” came the reply.
“God bless and keep you” was all that Markus Bruscante said as he terminated the call and then pressed ‘send’ on his computer screen to forward the e-mail to his contact.
Sitting at his desk, Lionel DeChevalier switched his telephone off and stared at his computer as he waited on the promised e-mail arriving. Beads of sweat began to form on his forehead and he swept them backwards into his hair. The e-mail arrived and he opened it to study the attachments. He began to think about how he could justify these images being put through the Prosopon™ system. It wasn’t the fact that he couldn’t use the system but its usage had a ‘track and trace’ filter to prevent unauthorised access to what was the most complete facial recognition database in the world. He had to concoct a justification for himself that allowed him to abuse the privileges and protocols his position afforded him. He looked around the open-plan office that he sat in and studied his colleagues, searching for inspiration of who he could use as an unwitting fall-guy. One of them could do the check but he just needed a decent enough story to concoct that was sufficient to convince them to do it for him. Over by the window on the far side of the office was Hélène Lecacheux, a recent secondment from DGSE in Paris, the Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure, France’s external intelligence agency, the French equivalent to the United Kingdom’s MI6 and the United States’ CIA. She was here for six months working on a multi-agency project to prevent terror attacks in southern France coming from those of middle-eastern or Asian appearance. With the hundreds of thousands of drifters, migrants and refugees flooding across the Mediterranean, France had recently gone on full alert to stem the flow of possible terrorists that could be hiding amongst the unfortunate souls fleeing to the supposed safety of Europe.
He printed off the images and collected them from his copier. For some reason, he repositioned the nameplate on his desk into exactly the same place it had been seconds before. He gazed at his nameplate ‘Senior Security Officer V - Lionel DeChevalier’ and casually walked over to the desk of Hélène Lecacheux.
“Hi Hélène. What a great view of the Rhône and the city you have from here. I’m stuck over there in a dimly lit corner. How are you finding working here at Interpol in Lyon? It’s a bit different from 141 Boulevard Mortier up in Paris. The weather is nicer here though. How are you finding the staff?”
Hélène put down her pen and looked out of the window and then at Lionel.
“Surprisingly, I’m really enjoying it down here. I was a bit discontented at first at leaving Paris, but I hadn’t given the notion of moving down here to Lyon was actually going to be to my advantage. The job is really interesting and I’ll be the first to admit I hadn’t appreciated how much Interpol was used by nearly every country in the world. I’ve come from external security and thought that I knew it all, but this move has been a real eye-opener for me. But you are right – the weather is nicer, the people are friendlier and the local food and drink is so much better than in Paris. And in Paris, I’m stuck in a room with no windows on the ground floor, but here, I’m four floors up and with a commanding view of the city of Lyon right from my desk.”
“That’s good to know and hear. Listen. I wonder if you could do me a favour? One of my contacts saw these three guys get out of a car in Aix-en-Provence, spend some time wandering about and then get back in their car and drive away in the direction of Marseille. It is probably nothing, but it is better being safe than sorry afterwards. I would usually run a check on them myself but I’ve been called up to a meeting on the top floor with Advanced Security and someone for RRIT, you know those guys from Rapid Response in Training division, and the Deployment Manager. They want to run a few scenarios past me because I’m a front-line desk jockey and I will honestly tell them what I really think of their plans.” He rolled his eyes upwards and tutted.
Hélène laughed. “Leave it with me and I will check them out for you. Full information on them if there is any? Leave it on your desk when I’ve done it?”
“That would be fantastic. I really appreciate this. Red or White?” he asked.
“Pardon?”
“Do you drink red or white wine?”
“Red!”
“One very large bottle of red wine is now heading your way. Thanks Hélène.” and handed her the file containing the three photographs, gave her a wink and headed out the office.
Once outside, he walked down the Quai Charles de Gaulle towards the Parc de la Tête d’Or and into the Botanical Gardens for a wander about for a couple of hours. He needed to pretend to be at an imaginary meeting and this was as good a place as any to hide.
12.04pm – 10th April, present day.
Outside Jnyandeep Medhansh’s house, Nalamar Road, Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir, India
Daniel and Rifat walked along the passageway and out into the street beside the car and then waited for Rama to appear as they had left him behind to finish talking to the young woman. Rama told the young woman that she wasn’t to hesitate in contacting him if her grandfather had any more information to share. But as they stood beside the vehicle, it was obvious that Daniel was having difficulty trying to process everything that Jnyandeep Medhansh had told him over the last hour or so. It would be fair to say that both Rifat and Rama were also struggling to comprehend the implications of what they had witnessed being told to Daniel by the old man.
>
“When I thanked Jyvandeep’s granddaughter for her help today, I gave her a photocopy of the stone and one of my business cards with your name written on the back of it. I asked her to relay our thanks to her grandfather and if he thought of anything else that might be of assistance to us, she was just to get in touch with me and I would arrange to come and see him again.”
Daniel nodded his appreciation. “Can we go back to your house just now please Rama? I need to write down everything that Jnyandeep told me so I can process the information and try and work out what it means while it is still fresh in my head. You guys can help me in case I miss anything.”
“Certainly.” replied Rama and unlocked the car for the three of them to get in. As they drove off, a figure cautiously emerged from the shadows of a wall of a building directly across the street from them, waited for the car to go out of sight and crossed over the road and slowly walked along the passageway. The watcher of earlier had returned to the area to find his three targets. It had been a simple task – a high-end BMW motor vehicle parked in the downtown area of Srinagar was a giveaway. All he had to do was just wait patiently, out of sight, for confirmation that it was indeed the car being used by the three men. He took photographs of the vehicle and its registration, and as the three men appeared from the passageway, he took some more photographs of them. He was happy with himself because he had now got a couple of decent shots of the white man’s face, even though he was still wearing the hooded top with it pulled up over his head. Henrique would be pleased. He pushed open the door into the courtyard and encountered a young woman hanging wet clothes on a line beside a fountain. The watcher walked over to her.
“Excuse me, but I have lost my three friends. I was supposed to meet them here. I’m very late and I think I may have missed them as I got held up at work. Have you seen them? One of my friends is a white man.”
The young woman placed a bundle of washing back down into a basket. “They left about 5 minutes ago. They were here speaking to my grandfather.” and she pointed in the direction of the door of the house that he was in.
“Do you want to speak to him as well? He’s very tired. Perhaps you could come back later on this afternoon?”
The watcher considered his reply before answering. This was as good an opportunity as any to get some information that could be important for Henrique. If he had something else he could use as well as the photographs he had taken, like addresses and names, he was confident that Henrique would pay him some sort of bonus for his efforts.
“I will need to leave just now to get back to my work and try and contact my friends, but I would like to come back sometime and see your grandfather. It might not be today but I would like to see him. What’s your grandfather called again?”
“Jnyandeep Medhansh” said the young woman.
The watcher thanked her, wished her a nice day and left her to continue hanging her washing out. He began to text Henrique to tell him that he had located where the three men had been and who they had been talking to. He would meet up with him later and tell him everything he had found out.
11.23am – 10th April, present day.
Interpol, 200 Quai Charles de Gaulle, Lyon, France
Hélène Lecacheux sat at her desk and gazed out of the window at the city of Lyon. She faced a quandary and was weighing up her options as what would be the best way for her to proceed. She had conflicting thoughts and was attempting to process which one would be the best choice for her to take. The Prosopon™ software had finished analysing the three photographs of the ‘targets’ that Lionel DeChevalier had given her in his request that a full database search was made on them, and if the ‘targets’ popped up on any of the Interpol databases, he had wanted whatever information there was about them, profiles for example, to be included with the identity results. The ‘targets’ were indeed contained within the Interpol databases but not for the reasons one would expect, and those reasons alone were now the cause of Hélène’s current anxiety. It wasn’t really anxiety, it was more concern. Her DGSE background had trained her to accept the facts as what they were, but this same DGSE background also caused her to become extremely suspicious of everything and anything that was just the slightest bit out of the ordinary. Something within was tugging at her subconscious to suggest that aspects of this request and subsequent search were not right but she couldn’t fathom out what they were.
As asked, she had compiled for Lionel an in-depth report about the three targets including their known profiles - who they were, what they were, where they were from and what they were known for and also the reasons as to why they appeared on the various Interpol databases. Individually, the file report for each one of the ’targets’ was definitely interesting reading but Hélène was fascinated about as to why these three individuals would be seen together. Her curiosity was now aroused and she wanted to know more these men, but she was working in Lyon on a secondment at Interpol and didn’t really know anyone. She certainly didn’t want to ruffle any feathers or cause a ruckus with her new colleagues and appear to be questioning the end results of a task she had been given to do.
She made a personal copy of the report, put it in an envelope and placed it in a drawer in her desk. She would probably take it home and study it later, but she would call in a favour with a friend at DGSE first. As the ringing tone sounded in her ear, Hélène prayed that Mathis Lemoine at the ‘International Liaison’ desk would know what to do. She prayed that he would answer his phone though.
“International Liaison Desk. Can I help you?”
“Mathis? It’s me. Hélène. Hélène Lecacheux.”
“Hélène! How the devil are you? How’s Interpol treating you?”
“Good. Good. Really enjoying it but I need a favour from you. I was asked to run an identity check on three people but the results I’ve just got back are a bit strange. I mean the results are correct but the context of the situation that these three people are supposed to be in is wrong. I think I may have been given a very clever and devious test to see how I will react, but if it’s not a test, then there may be something going on that DGSE might have to investigate. I’ll send you the results just now. I need you to confirm for me that all that I have is correct but I also need you to go and find out some additional information for me as well. Can you open the file when it comes through and I’ll tell you what I need you to find out?”
“Sure. That’s the file arrived.” Mathis opened the file and had three dossiers filling the screen of his computer.
“Right. The first guy is a Rifatullah Khan, a Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence agency operative that’s primarily based in the Mirpur region of the Pakistani-administered portion of the Kashmir. The second guy is a Rama Shresth, a retired Captain in the Indian Kashmiri Security Forces but he’s now a successful businessman living in Srinagar in northern India. The third guy is the one that’s really got my attention though. His name is Daniel Lauridsen, a former Frømandskorpset operative of the Royal Danish Navy. He’s seen some serious action as a member of one of the most elite special-forces units in the world, but this it what I want to ask you, what’s an Pakistani ISI agent, a retired Captain in the Indian Kashmiri Security Forces and a former Frømandskorpset special-forces man doing together? It isn’t playing tennis, but whatever it is, it’s a really strange combination to be teaming up with each other.”
Mathis agreed. ”That’s a really odd grouping to have. A Pakistani, an Indian and a Dane together. Where did you say these guys were?”
”I didn’t, but I was told that the three of them were seen together in Aix-en-Provence and were last spotted heading towards Marseille. That’s all very well, but I enlarged the photographs I was given and then studied the backgrounds of the ones for Khan and Shresth. They are in the same place because there is writing on a poster or something behind them. It’s in English and Urdu and it says ’Roz Abal Tomb’. I checked out Roz Abal and the onl
y one I could find was Rozabal and it’s in Srinagar in India. To be honest, I think I am being used in some sort of training exercise to see what I can do and handle, but my defence mechanisms have gone on full alert and I’d never forgive myself if I didn’t check this out and then something happens somewhere that I could’ve stopped. I’m not going to go and disclose that I know that the photographs were taken in India and not France though when I submit my report here. I was asked to identify the three men and I have completed the task I was given to do.”
”True enough. Better being safe than sorry. What do you need me to find out for you?” said Mathis.
”I need you to find out where these guys currently are and I need you to speak to your foreign contacts and find out if there is some sort of joint operation on the go just now that we are not involved in and don’t know about. If you can do that for me, it’ll put my mind at ease and I can then relax and probably discover I was given these photographs as some sort of test after all.” She laughed at herself and then asked how Mathis was doing and did he miss her? She enjoyed having a short conversation with a good friend from her proper job back in Paris. He promised to start making enquiries and would send her a text when he had anything to tell. She thanked him and ended the call, safely shut down her computer and gathered up the file she had prepared for Lionel DeChevalier and went looking for his desk in the far corner of the office.
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