Box 88 : A Novel (2020)

by Cumming, Charles

  ‘You should too!’

  They clinked glasses. Kite caught sight of Martha standing close to the stairs at the entrance to the nightclub. He gestured towards the dance floor and mouthed, ‘Dance?’ She shook her head and pointed upstairs, miming with her fingers that she wanted to go for a walk.

  ‘You go ahead!’ he shouted at Eskandarian. ‘I’ll be there in a minute.’

  The Iranian looked up and saw Martha, understanding instantly what was going on.

  ‘Good luck!’ he said and sashayed towards Hana without rhythm or skill as Kite made his way to the entrance.

  ‘Having a good time?’ Martha asked him. ‘Ros has gone home. Told me to tell you she says goodnight.’

  ‘Why did she leave?’

  ‘Had an argument with Luc. He’s such a wanker. You notice how he’s always putting her down? Criticised her outfit, they had a blazing row upstairs, she went off in a taxi.’

  ‘Jesus.’ Kite turned and saw Luc talking to Jacqui. ‘He seems to have got over it.’

  ‘He doesn’t care. Only thinks about himself. Vain prat.’

  Kite was startled by Martha’s outburst, but impressed that she had spoken her mind. He told her that he had his own reservations where Luc was concerned, not least because Xavier often seemed so angered and frustrated by him.

  ‘I don’t know as much about Xav as I do Jacqui. Daddy spoils her, so she can’t see it. You ask me, Ros is a saint for putting up with him. Classic bully. Puts people down so he can feel superior.’

  Kite realised what it was about Luc that had always irked him: he took Ros for granted, taking little potshots at her background and class, needlessly picking fights and contradicting her when it would have been easier simply to let things go. Why had he never admitted this to himself? Was it because Luc’s behaviour sometimes reminded him of his own mother?

  ‘You going for some fresh air?’ he asked.

  ‘Nah,’ Martha replied. ‘Changed my mind. Let’s dance.’

  Abbas and Luc drove them back. They reached the villa just before three o’clock in the morning. Luc and Jacqui went straight to bed. To Kite’s surprise and pleasure, Eskandarian announced that he was in the mood to keep drinking and encouraged the others to join him on the terrace.

  ‘We need music!’ Xavier shouted.

  Hana put a finger to her lips and ushered him away from the stairs. As Eskandarian led them through the sitting room he agreed that it would be a good idea to ‘play some ABBA’ as long as they kept the volume down.

  ‘ABBA?’ said Martha contemptuously, as if Eskandarian had suggested putting on Mozart or Perry Como. ‘Who listens to ABBA? You must be joking.’

  ‘I’ll go and get the stereo from the pool,’ said Kite, miraculously provided with an excuse finally to bring the ghetto blaster up to the house and to plug it in behind the sofa.

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ Martha replied.

  Leaving Xavier with Eskandarian, Hana and a bottle of Johnnie Walker, Kite led Martha away from the terrace into the darkened garden, following the twisting, narrow route to the pool by the light of the moon. As they approached the branches of the palm tree which had fallen across the path, it felt like the most natural thing in the world for Kite to reach back and take Martha’s hand. They ducked beneath the fronds and emerged in front of the swimming pool. Kite pulled her towards him and kissed her. To his amazement it was not like the kisses he had known at parties back home – mouths wide open, tongues moving furiously with lust – but a slow, tender contact, almost motionless at first, so intense and pleasurable that Kite never wanted it to end.

  ‘Jesus,’ she said. ‘You took your time. I’ve been waiting ages for you to do that.’

  ‘More,’ he said, and they were soon lying on the grass near the pool. It was still warm from a hundred summer days. Kite’s hands were on Martha’s waist, her hips, the small of her back, his mouth tasting the skin on her shoulders and the tops of her breasts. He unzipped her dress. They became reckless in the warmth of the night. Martha loosened the belt on Kite’s trousers and unbuttoned his shirt as the cicadas continued their ceaseless chatter. Her lips and hands were everywhere at once, so quick and experienced, taking him into her mouth then rolling onto her back and urging him to be inside her. Kite lost all track of time, of place, of any sense that he should be on the terrace with Eskandarian doing his duty for Queen and country. He had never known passion like this, an experience at once so new and so intimate that it took him a long time afterwards to come to his senses.

  ‘We should go back,’ he whispered, holding Martha’s naked body on the grass. Neither of them had spoken for what felt like ages. ‘They’ll wonder what happened to us.’

  ‘They’ll be playing backgammon,’ Martha replied, kissing his neck and rolling away from him. She stood up and pulled on her dress, grinning with the mischief of what they had done. Kite’s clothes were all over the grass. Martha picked up her knickers, a bracelet, his boxer shorts and shirt and they dressed separately in silence, moonlight reflecting on the motionless water of the pool.

  ‘I think I’ve been bitten by a mozzy,’ she said, but did not seem to mind.

  Kite fastened his belt. Blades of grass were still stuck to his knees and the back of his shirt. The ghetto blaster was inside the swimming hut and he went to fetch it. When he came back, Martha kissed him again, grabbing the back of his head and pulling him towards her. He couldn’t put his right arm around her because he was carrying the stereo and had to lower it carefully to the ground, aware of the fragile technology inside, so that he could kiss her properly.

  ‘OK, enough,’ she said after a minute. She touched her lips and smiled at him. ‘You’re such a good kisser, Lockie. Jesus.’

  ‘You too,’ he said.

  ‘How do I look? I feel like a complete mess.’

  ‘Fucking amazing,’ he said.

  Xavier and Eskandarian were indeed playing backgammon, their low conversation, the rattle of the dice and the soft wooden tap of the checkers audible as they made their way back through the garden. Kite was in a state of dizzied euphoria, completely smitten by Martha, elated finally to have been with her and pleased not to have messed it up. As they emerged onto the terrace, he triumphantly raised Strawson’s ghetto blaster above his head, like Perseus with the head of Medusa.

  ‘Music!’ said Hana, coming outside with a cafetière of black coffee and some small blue cups on a tray. ‘At last!’

  ‘Where the fuck have you two been?’ Xavier asked drunkenly. ‘Or shouldn’t I ask?’

  ‘Lockie was showing me how the pool filter worked,’ Martha replied. ‘It was really interesting.’

  Eskandarian smiled and stood up, stretching his arms above his head and letting out a deep, satisfied sigh. He knew exactly what had been going on and even slipped Kite a little sideways look of congratulation. Kite thought of Bijan, of all the women in Iran denied make-up and lipstick and lovers outside of marriage. If he and Martha had been caught doing what they had just done in a Tehran public park, would Martha have been whipped and Kite’s dead body hung from a crane? Surely not. He snapped out of it and poured both of them a drink. Half of the Johnnie Walker had already been consumed and there was now a bottle of red wine on the table. Kite plugged in the stereo, positioned it so that the speakers were facing Eskandarian’s chair, and pressed play on the tape deck. Strawson had promised that the Turings would have the ability to strip out any music on the surveillance tapes so that the recorded conversations remained intact, but as soon as Bob Marley started singing ‘Is This Love?’ Kite wondered how the hell they’d be able to hear anything at all.

  ‘Who’s winning at backgammon?’ he asked.

  ‘Who do you think?’ Eskandarian replied. ‘You have no faith in me?’

  ‘Lucky dice,’ said Xavier. ‘He’s just had lucky dice.’

  Eskandarian was smoking a Cuban cigar. Hana was standing behind him, massaging his shoulders. She had changed out of her miniskirt and was wearing a sa
ri which reminded Kite of adverts for Cathay Pacific featuring impossibly beautiful Asian stewardesses serving glasses of champagne in first class. It was very obvious that she was looking down at Xavier and trying to catch his eye. Kite began to worry. Drunk as they both were, surely Hana wouldn’t cheat on Eskandarian and risk a fling with her hosts’ eighteen-year-old son? Surely she was just an Olympic tease playing with the feelings of a boy who very obviously lusted after her? Maybe Eskandarian was in on the joke and they laughed about Xavier every night when they went to bed. Martha poured the coffee, then went inside to change. Kite offered to take on the winner of the next backgammon game and found himself playing – and losing – to Eskandarian, despite practising against Peele night after night in Hampstead.

  ‘You’re right,’ he said to Xavier. ‘He gets lucky dice.’

  They stayed on the terrace for another hour, finishing the coffee, the wine and the whisky and trying out one of Eskandarian’s cigars. Kite had never smoked one before; he told Ali that he liked the smell but not the taste. He judged that nothing Eskandarian said would be of any consequence to BOX 88, though perhaps his relaxed attitude to western music, his habit of enjoying the company of people half his age, as well as his heroic consumption of alcohol would help them to form a more detailed picture of his character. At four-thirty, the Iranian announced that he was going to bed and bade everyone goodnight. Hana said that she would be up soon, after helping to clear the terrace. Ten minutes later, she failed to come back to say goodnight after ferrying a tray of glasses and coffee cups to the kitchen. Xavier lit a final cigarette and said he was going for a wander in the garden, leaving Martha and Kite alone.

  ‘Let’s go back to the pool,’ she said. ‘I want you again.’

  ‘Give me five minutes,’ Kite replied, amazed that he was going to be given another opportunity so soon to relive the bliss of their earlier encounter. ‘Just going inside.’

  He went upstairs, brushed his teeth and put on a fresh T-shirt. The lights in the attic were all out. The door to Abbas’s room was closed. Kite could hear the sound of the bodyguard snoring. He tiptoed down to the ground floor, where he and Xavier had hung their jackets after getting back from the club. Kite walked across the hall to fetch them, only to find that Abbas had also left his jacket hanging next to Xavier’s. Kite knew that he should search it; if he was caught, it would be simple to claim that he was looking for cigarettes.

  Without removing it from the hook, he reached into the inside pockets of the jacket. They were empty. The material was heavy and smelled strongly of tobacco. Kite patted the sides of the jacket. There was a document of some kind in the left hip pocket. He took it out. It was an envelope which had already been opened.

  A creaking noise behind him. Abbas? Eskandarian? Kite didn’t want to risk being discovered so he walked to the downstairs bathroom, switched on the light, locked himself inside and searched the contents of the envelope.

  There was a letter, written in Farsi on what appeared to be official government stationery. Two names were written in the text of the letter in English: ASEF BERBERIAN and DAVID FORMAN. With it, folded in half, was a return Air France airline ticket from Paris to New York JFK dated 22 August. The ticket was made out in the name ‘Abbas Karrubi’. Kite committed the names and the flight numbers to memory, then opened up a third document, a letter from the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Manhattan confirming that Abbas had a room reservation for a five-night stay in New York.

  It felt like a smoking gun. Kite hurriedly put the documents back as he had found them, unlocked the door, switched off the light and returned the envelope to the left-hand hip pocket of Abbas’s jacket. By the time he got back to the terrace, Martha was wondering what had happened to him. Wordlessly she took his hand and they walked into the garden.

  The first glow of the dawning sun was visible as a pale strip of light on the hills around Mougins. Kite was confused. The dates for the trip to New York coincided with a business conference Eskandarian was scheduled to attend in Lisbon. Was he planning to cancel his visit to Portugal so that Abbas could accompany him to the United States? Or was Abbas going solo, potentially meeting a contact in New York to discuss the subway attack? Martha suddenly stopped walking. They kissed beneath an olive tree. She tasted of cigarettes and wine. Kite wondered if it had been a mistake to brush his teeth.

  ‘What was that?’

  A noise near the pool. Perhaps an animal of some kind. They stood stock-still, listening out. Kite heard the movement again.

  ‘Xav?’ he mouthed with a shrug.

  He walked ahead of Martha, along the moonlit path, reaching the palm tree with the fallen fronds. There was a gap through the trees towards the poolhouse. Kite gestured at Martha not to make any sound.

  Pressed up against the side of the hut, his trousers round his ankles, his naked, untanned buttocks glowing white in the moonlight, was Xavier. On her knees in front of him, only yards from where Kite and Martha had earlier been rolling on the grass, was Hana.

  ‘Jesus,’ Kite whispered and gestured at Martha to tiptoe backwards.

  ‘What?’ she said, heading back in the direction of the house.

  ‘It’s Xav and Hana,’ he told her when they were far enough away, barely able to believe what he had just seen and convinced that the less Martha knew, the better. ‘They’re getting off with each other by the pool.’

  42

  The man who walked into the house was in his early thirties. He was tall and physically fit, wearing a white shirt, dark trousers and black shoes. He moved with a pumped-up swagger. His most striking feature was his facial hair: a thick, carefully tended moustache and goatee, without sideburns, which gave him the appearance of a thug biker or religious zealot. Isobel was immediately afraid of him.

  Two of the men guarding her went to the door to greet him. They spoke in hushed tones in Farsi. Isobel thought that she heard one of them calling the man ‘Hossein’. They were both subservient towards him. In due course the newcomer walked into the living room and stood in front of her.

  ‘You don’t look sick,’ he said in English.

  ‘Who are you?’ Isobel replied.

  Hossein snapped a remark at Karim, admonishing him for what Isobel assumed was weakness or stupidity. Karim looked ashamed.

  ‘How pregnant are you?’ Hossein asked.

  ‘Five months. I need to go to hospital. I’m bleeding, it’s not—’

  The man did not let her finish. He shouted at her: ‘You’re not bleeding!’ and looked at the others with contempt. ‘You fell for this act?’ he said in English. ‘She’s not in pain. She’s not bleeding. Why the fuck you stay here and not move her?’

  None of the men answered. They were too cowed.

  ‘Your husband,’ Hossein continued, looking at Isobel. ‘He’s also making a lot of trouble for us. What is it with you two?’

  Hope surged in Isobel at the mention of Lockie. He was alive. He was fighting back. She said: ‘Good. I’m glad he’s not giving in to you,’ and showed him a defiant smile. It was a mistake.

  Hossein struck Isobel across the face with the back of his hand. She cried out. The pain was excruciating. Tears sprang to her eyes. She tried to blink them away before the men would notice them.

  ‘You are monsters,’ she said. Karim looked to the ground. The guard with the narrow chin turned and walked out of the room.

  ‘Maybe, maybe not,’ Hossein replied, before speaking again to Karim in Farsi. Isobel dabbed at the tears with a tissue while they were looking away. She was too frightened to risk more play-acting. Rambo kicked, as if to ask his mother what was happening. She almost burst into tears.

  ‘The last man to hit me was my father,’ she said. ‘That was the last time I ever saw him.’

  It was meant as a statement of defiance, but Hossein did not react. There was a plate of chocolate biscuits on the table beside them. He leaned down and took one, sliding his eyes towards Isobel as he took a first bite. She noticed that the backs of both of his
hands were bruised. She wondered if he had hit Lockie. There was a ring on his right hand. It must have been what had cut her face.

  ‘You have an hour left,’ he told her, chewing the biscuit.

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘One hour.’

  ‘I don’t understand. An hour for what?’

  ‘If your husband doesn’t give my boss the answers he wants, I have orders to kill you. So make yourself comfortable, enjoy these last few moments with your child.’ Hossein nodded at her belly. ‘Lachlan is the sort of person who values his own skin more than he values his family. I don’t have much hope for you, Mrs Kite. Let’s wait here and see what happens.’

  43

  Kite and Martha went to separate rooms. Martha was worried that they would sleep late and Jacqui or Rosamund might find them in bed together in the morning. Kite set the alarm and had the drunken idea of putting the clock under his pillow so that it would be inaudible to anyone in the house when it went off. As things turned out, he woke naturally just before nine and switched it off. Groggy and dazed, he went into the bathroom, splashed cold water onto his face and brushed his teeth, remembering how much he had smelled of booze and tobacco on his first visit to the safe house. The door of Abbas’s bedroom was open and there was no sign of him. The rest of the house was silent. Kite changed into his running gear, put the piece of paper on which he had written Bijan’s phone number in the back pocket of his shorts and walked downstairs.

  Rosamund was dressed and drinking tea in the kitchen.

  ‘Another run?’ she said, feigning astonishment. ‘Is there no stopping you, Lockie? I thought I heard someone going out a moment ago. Must have been Abbas.’

  Kite told her he would be back within the hour, stretched under the lime tree and jogged down the drive. Abbas was indeed sitting in the Audi in his regular parking spot. He wound down the window when he saw Kite.

  ‘You missed your friend,’ he said.

  For an awful moment Kite thought he meant Billy Peele. Then he looked down the road and saw Martha walking alone towards Mougins. A strong smell of sweat and unwashed clothes wafted out of the car. Abbas was wearing the suit jacket. The envelope was on the passenger seat beside him.