‘I’ll be fine,’ he told him. ‘Good luck with whatever it is you’re doing.’
They shook Kite’s hand and wished him well. Carl went out onto the road, gave the all-clear and Kite jogged away from the house. Within five minutes he had made a steep uphill climb and was soaked in sweat. It was time to go back to the villa. The Audi was no longer parked in the lay-by. Abbas had moved it back to the lime tree and was eating breakfast alone at a small table in the area outside the kitchen which Hélène used for hanging out the washing. To Kite’s relief, but not to his surprise, the bodyguard did not look up as he went into the house.
The dining room was laid out for breakfast. Luc was at the head of the table reading Le Monde, hair slicked back in the style of Gordon Gecko, Rosamund beside him engrossed in a paperback of Oscar and Lucinda. There were plates of ham and cheese in front of them, baskets of pain au chocolat and croissants. On a side table Hélène had left out bottles of Evian and Badoit and a jug of freshly squeezed orange juice. It needed a stir. There was a large red coffee jug on a mat in front of Luc, little bowls of jam and yoghurt and honey.
‘Good run?’ Rosamund asked, spotting Kite at the door. She was sipping her customary cup of Twining’s English Breakfast tea. ‘Feeling better?’
‘The next one will be easier,’ Kite replied. ‘Going to try to go every day.’
‘Well don’t have a heart attack, for goodness’ sake.’ She turned to Luc. ‘Darling, did you know Lockie was an elite athlete?’
‘Maybe he has someone he’s trying to impress.’
Luc’s reply was not as jovial nor as teasing as it might have been; there was a sting to it. His face was hidden behind a photograph of Francois Mitterrand on the cover of Le Monde. Kite picked up a plum and pretended to throw it at him. Rosamund apologised with her eyes.
‘Enjoy your breakfast,’ he told them. ‘I’m going for a shower.’
40
The next forty-eight hours passed without serious incident. On the first day, Eskandarian, Hana, Luc and Rosamund went to lunch in Menton with friends, leaving the others behind. Abbas went with them. When Alain and Hélène drove into Mougins to buy food, Kite was able to take advantage of their absence to look, without success, for Hana’s passport and to leave the Gameboy wedged behind a chest of drawers in Luc’s office. He contrived to make it appear as though it been left among a pile of books and magazines on top of the chest and had fallen down the back. Eskandarian had also left a pile of papers on a stool in the living room. With Xavier, Martha and Jacqui by the pool, Kite flicked through them, seeing documents in Farsi, Russian and English, but without his camera to hand he had no opportunity to photograph them. Instead he looked for the keywords he had memorised from his training – BIOPREPARAT, PRALIDOXIME, IDLEWILD – and made a mental note of the senders’ names, scribbling them down on a sheet of paper in his bedroom. He would have risked going up to the attic to search Eskandarian’s rooms had Luc not come back astride a brand-new bottle green Vespa which he told Xavier and Kite they could use to ‘buzz into Mougins’. Kite asked if Martha and Jacqui were insured to drive it. Luc shook his head.
‘Just you two,’ he replied. ‘I don’t want the girls riding it.’
That night they ate supper outside. Alain, who had a cigarette permanently clamped to his lips and was always busy about the house hanging pictures and making repairs, lit mosquito coils at the southern end of the terrace. A smell of cardamom and citronella drifted across the table as they ate chilled pea soup and poule au pot in the moonlight. Kite was again seated next to Hana and therefore prevented from speaking at any length to Eskandarian. By eleven he was tired and retired to bed, leaving Xavier, Jacqui and Martha watching Betty Blue on VHS.
The next day Kite woke up at eight, jogged over to the safe house, gave Peele the list of names from Eskandarian’s correspondence and returned to discover that Eskandarian, Luc and Hana had already gone into Vence to look at the Matisse chapel. He knew that BOX 88 would be covering their every move outside the villa, photographing anyone of interest with whom Eskandarian came into contact. Meanwhile Rosamund busily made changes to the house, twice driving into Antibes and returning with the Citroën full of crockery, glassware and ornaments to replace many of those bequeathed to Luc by his great-uncle. On the second trip, Martha and Jacqui went with her, leaving Kite and Xavier by the pool. They returned to the house only to grab a snack, take a shower or vegetate in what Luc still insisted on calling ‘the playroom’. Kite again looked for Hana’s passport without success, concluding that she was probably carrying it around in her handbag. Peele was keen to join the dots between Xavier’s father and Eskandarian and had instructed Kite to take a look at the documents on Luc’s desk and to leave his Walkman under a sofa in the living room. Yet there was never a moment when Alain wasn’t lurking around, changing a plug or hanging a picture and generally making Kite feel that it would be discovered almost as soon as he had planted it. The last thing he wanted was Alain catching him in the act of rifling through Luc’s personal effects or approaching him in front of Eskandarian and saying that he had found his Walkman in an unusual place.
Everything changed on the third day. After a late breakfast, the family and their guests drove in three cars to Cannes with the idea of spending the day at the beach. Kite brought a hacky sack which he promptly lost in the sea, having thrown it too far beyond Xavier, who allowed it to sink to the bottom of the Mediterranean rather than swim out to fetch it. They then bought a Frisbee, teaching Eskandarian how to throw and catch it on the flat sands, doubtless to the consternation of surveillance teams of any persuasion photographing the Iranian from stakeout positions overlooking the beach. It was Kite’s first proper interaction with the Iranian and as the disc skimmed low over the beach he again found it impossible to imagine that the easy-going, laughing man running this way and that was the brains behind the Lockerbie atrocity, the mastermind of a follow-up attack in New York of even greater malignancy. Hana and Jacqui lay on towels chatting in the sun, having forged a somewhat unlikely bond. Martha had gone into town with Rosamund to buy more film for her camera. At all times Abbas sat on a fold-up chair a few metres from Eskandarian, his manner composed, his expression utterly inscrutable. He continued to wear a black suit, even in the heat of the midday sun, and, with the exception of Luc, rarely made any effort to speak to other members of the party.
They went for lunch at an upmarket brasserie in the centre of Cannes, Abbas eating a bowl of spaghetti at a separate table. Afterwards Eskandarian, Luc and Hana returned to the villa with Abbas, Rosamund drove into Antibes to buy more furniture for the house and Martha and Jacqui went shopping for clothes. Xavier had drunk more than a bottle of rosé with his swordfish and promptly fell asleep as soon as he lay down on the beach. Kite was left alone with Papillon, the book he had been reading for the previous three days. He decided to walk up to the main road and finish it in a café.
The August crowds were scattered along the promenade in shorts and bikinis and flip-flops. Waiters criss-crossed the pavements carrying trays of drinks and food to customers at the cafés and restaurants lining the beach. A bi-plane was trailing an advertisement for a local nightclub high over the glistening sea as Kite looked around for somewhere to sit. As he gazed up at the sky he was almost run over by an accelerating Renault 5. The driver leaned on his horn, swore at him and drove off. Kite picked a café a block behind the beach. He wanted to read Papillon without the distraction of the cars and crowds on the promenade.
He had only been seated for a few minutes when a man of Middle Eastern appearance walked up to his table and asked, in good English, what Kite was reading. He had short, curly black hair and was clean-shaven. A slight hare lip gave his face an undertow of menace, but he was not physically imposing. He was wearing stonewashed denim jeans, Reebok trainers and a pale green shirt from Benetton.
‘Papillon,’ Kite replied quietly. He did not want to get into a long conversation with a stranger who was probably interes
ted only in selling him counterfeit tapes or sunglasses.
‘You are English?’
‘Scottish.’
‘Ah! Scottish!’ Kite sensed that it would be some time before the man left him in peace. ‘Sean Connery! Robert Burns! You wear kilts, yes?’
‘Every day.’
The man laughed uproariously, repeating the words ‘Every day’ several times until he had calmed down.
‘And you are on holiday here in Cannes? You have come to France before?’
Kite’s antennae twitched. Who was this guy? What did he want? On closer inspection, he didn’t look like a salesman. He wasn’t carrying a suitcase full of shades or videos. His eyes were sharp and intelligent, his hands and clothes clean. There was about him a kind of fanatical intensity which Kite was wary of.
‘My first time. I’m here with friends.’
‘What friends, my friend? Where they from? Scotland too?’
Kite suspected that the man knew who he was and had followed him from the beach. He pulled his café au lait towards him and said: ‘Tell you what. What can I do for you? I just came in here for a quiet cup of coffee.’
‘You are friends with Ali Eskandarian, yes?’
The blood must have drained from Kite’s face because the man smiled reassuringly and offered to shake his hand.
‘It is OK, my friend. I am not here to harm you. My name is Bijan. I am an Iranian. I live here in Cannes. France is my home.’
‘How do you know Ali?’ Kite looked around the café to see if anyone was watching them. It’s always the person you least expect, Peele had told him.
‘I recognised him. Let us just say that. And I wonder what a nice Scottish man like yourself is doing with this person. He is a friend of yours, you say? Of your family?’
Was this a game? Was Strawson orchestrating another test of Kite’s nerve? Kite again scanned the café. A young family were eating ice creams two tables away. A workman was drinking a balloon of cognac at the bar. An elderly man and woman were playing cards in the corner. Out on the street, pedestrians were walking past carrying beach towels and bags of groceries, a drop-kick terrier yapping on the end of a leash. Kite tried to assess if anyone was standing around, someone who looked edgy or out of place. There didn’t appear to be anybody. Peele had taught him how to remember repeating faces, how to recognise unusual behaviour on the street, but Kite hadn’t taken much notice of the lessons because he had been reassured that his work in France wouldn’t involve anti-surveillance of any kind.
‘Ali is a friend of the family I’m staying with,’ he replied, wondering if he had already admitted too much. ‘I don’t really know him. We only met two days ago.’
Without being invited to do so, the Iranian drew up a chair and sat opposite him. He squinted slightly against a beam of bright afternoon sun flooding in through the window and moved his head into a patch of shade. Only when he was satisfied with his position did he say: ‘May I join you, please? This is permitted?’ and signalled to the waiter to bring him a coffee. Kite was now too intrigued to object. He wanted to know why the man had cornered him and what he knew about Eskandarian.
‘That’s fine,’ he said.
‘You really do not know him,’ Bijan replied, touching the scar on his lip.
‘Excuse me?’
‘If you did …’ He reached for the copy of Papillon and turned it in his soft, unmarked hands. ‘If you did know who he was, you would not spend time with him. You would not eat with him or allow your sisters to be in such a man’s company.’
Kite was going to say: ‘They’re not my sisters’ but thought better of it. Instead he took out a cigarette, offered one to the Iranian, and for reasons which he afterwards could not properly explain, gave Bijan a false name.
‘I’m Adam.’
‘Adam who?’
‘Let’s just leave it at Adam. What do you want from me?’
‘How much do you know of life in Iran today, Adam?’
‘Not much.’
‘Don’t you think that an intelligent young man like yourself should know more about my country when you are spending so much time with one of its most influential citizens?’
Kite wondered what he meant by the term ‘influential citizen’, but said: ‘I’m not spending all that much time with him. I’m just on holiday.’
Bijan shook his head, thanked the waiter as he put an espresso in front of him and said: ‘So you would like to know more?’
It sounded like a sales pitch, though there was a sudden emptying out of Bijan’s eyes, the appearance of a profound disquiet. Kite felt that he had no alternative other than to say: ‘Sure. Why not?’
‘Do you know what kinds of corruption your friend Mr Ali Eskandarian presides over? The nature of the government in Tehran? The 1979 Revolution, in which your friend played a willing part, promised peace and stability to a generation of men who welcomed the arrival of Khomeini in Iran. Instead what did we get? The mujahideen have torn our peaceful country apart with a war against Saddam Hussein, a man supported and armed by the West. Did you know this, Mr Adam? That your government and the administration in Washington gave credibility to a man who used mustard gas, sarin gas against the Iranian people? Why did a million of my brothers and sisters have to die for this regime? Tell me.’
Kite saw that he was dealing with a fanatic. He wondered if he was compromising or in some other way undermining his own mission by agreeing to sit with an individual so opposed to Eskandarian.
‘I really should be going,’ he said, reaching for the book. ‘I’m just a friend of the family. You’ve confused me with somebody else.’
‘Have I? Have I confused you, kind sir? Do you not care that gangs of men roam the streets of Tehran at night carrying sticks and chains with which to attack anyone who does not share their belief in Islam? Do you not care that Rafsanjani and others of Ali Eskandarian’s friends do nothing to stop this? You cannot wear shorts in Iran like you are wearing today in this nice quiet café. You cannot drink the alcohol such as you and your friend Mr Eskandarian enjoyed today at lunch. Perhaps you like to go to parties with the women in your group on the beach? There is nothing wrong with this. But if you were a young man living in Iran today, you would be forbidden to attend such parties. Your sisters cannot wear make-up, they cannot own perfume. Is one of them your girlfriend? She could not be seen with you in public or she would be whipped, humiliated, while you, Adam, would be made an example of. Even western music, such as we can hear now in this café, is outlawed. People must listen to Madonna or Bruce Springsteen or Elton John with headphones, in the privacy of their houses. And they must hope that their records and tapes are not discovered by the Revolutionary Guard.’
Kite was still processing what Bijan had said about alcohol. Such as you and your friend enjoyed today at lunch. He must have been sitting in the brasserie and watching them on the beach. Bijan might now follow him back to the villa in order to discover where he was staying. Christ, maybe he was part of an exile group targeting Eskandarian.
‘How would you feel if you were taken from this place, right here and now, and whipped in public, in front of all these people, just for sleeping with an unmarried woman or for wearing the clothes you are wearing, that T-shirt?’ Bijan grabbed Kite’s wrist and gestured outside at the crowded street. ‘Would you like to be stoned to death in public? Your dead naked body hung from a crane for your friends and family to see? To serve as a warning to others?’
Kite said: ‘Of course not’ but Bijan was only listening to himself.
‘This is the reality of modern Iran, my friend. This is the reality of the regime Mr Eskandarian serves, enriching them, enriching himself. There is no democracy.’
Kite still had most of his coffee to drink and a half-smoked cigarette tilted into the ashtray in front of him. He wanted to stand up and leave but had to be sure that Bijan would not follow him.
‘Let me tell you, Adam,’ the Iranian continued. The scar on his lip seemed to have b
ecome more pronounced as he spoke. ‘Then you can decide whether to believe me or not. Perhaps you think I am a mad person walking the streets of Cannes, stopping Scottish tourists in cafés and holding them prisoner with my tongue.’ Bijan flashed him a gap-toothed grin, a strip of silver fillings visible in the lower recesses of his mouth. ‘I myself am a marked man. Why? Because I oppose the regime. These men of God in Tehran, these supposed men of peace, send their Revolutionary Guards to France to hunt down and kill men like me. We are not allowed to organise peaceful opposition to our own government. We are not allowed to wish for a better country. This is the extent of their paranoia, of their murderous intentions. Bombs have been planted in cars in France. My comrades have been beheaded. Think about this, Adam. A man in his own home forced to kneel by the scum of the Revolution, sometimes in front of their wives, their children, and their heads taken off by a sword.’
Kite wanted to believe that what Bijan was telling him was pure fantasy, but there was such intensity, such range and detail in his accusations, that he could only assume that at least part of it was true.
‘That sounds horrific,’ he said, because there was a look in Bijan’s eye which demanded a response. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘I am sorry, too, my friend. Any former servant of the shah is a legitimate target, yet Ali Eskandarian, and scum like him, can take their vacations in France, drink alcohol, sleep with young women, and they will not be touched. Why? Because they help to make secret deals with America, they buy their arms and their weapons. In return, the regime gets rich and turns a blind eye. You know of your writer, Mr Rushdie?’
‘Of course,’ Kite replied, not wanting to talk about Rushdie but to hear more about the nature of Eskandarian’s relationship with the American government. Was Bijan referring to Iran-Contra, which Peele had spent a morning explaining to him in Hampstead, or to something else entirely?
Box 88 : A Novel (2020) Page 30