Box 88 : A Novel (2020)

by Cumming, Charles

  ‘Where’s she going?’ he asked.

  Abbas summoned the energy to shrug, reached for the automated button and closed the window without responding. Kite called out to Martha just as she was about to pass out of sight of the house.

  She stopped and turned. They were three hundred metres apart. A car came down the road, forcing her onto the verge. Kite walked towards her, she towards him.

  ‘What’s going on?’ he said. They did not kiss but briefly held one another’s hands. Kite was conscious that he was already late for his meeting with Peele. ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Got to go into town,’ she replied. She looked tired, but appeared happy to see him.

  ‘Why? What’s happened?’

  ‘We weren’t very careful last night,’ she said, touching her stomach. ‘I need to go to the chemist, see if I can get a morning-after pill.’

  Kite was confused. At the time Martha had told him it was safe, that they didn’t need to use protection.

  ‘I thought you said—’

  She looked at him sheepishly. ‘I checked my pill. I’ve missed two in the last week. I’m a bit hopeless. I’m not on it for the normal reasons. It’s not because I’m seeing anyone in London. Does that make sense?’

  It didn’t make complete sense, but Kite nodded as if it did, relieved that Martha didn’t have a boyfriend but worried that she was now going to have to suffer feeling sick after taking the medication. Des had slept with a girl at a party who had taken the morning-after pill. She had been laid up in bed for three days.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ he said. ‘I would have come with you.’

  ‘It’s fine, Lockie. Not your fault.’ She tried to shake off the awkwardness with a friendly smile. Kite was worried that he had embarrassed her but determined that she should not go into Mougins alone.

  ‘I can go back to the house and change,’ he suggested. He did not want to do that but was prepared to put Martha’s needs ahead of BOX 88. ‘Or I can just come with you now.’ He thought about Peele waiting for him along the road. If he didn’t report today, there would be hell to pay. ‘Or come back. Let’s have breakfast. I’ll go for my run. Then we can go in later on the Vespa and—’

  ‘I don’t want the others to know.’

  ‘They won’t. It’ll just be you and me. Don’t go on your own, Martha. That’s miserable. It’s my fault. I should have had a condom or—’

  ‘Where? In your wallet? Whipped it out by the pool? Classy.’

  He liked it that she was so easy-going with him, forgiving and quick to laugh. They decided that they would go into Mougins later, after breakfast, and walked back together towards the house.

  ‘Give me half an hour,’ he said within earshot of Abbas as they reached the gate. ‘Save me a croissant.’

  Kite was outside the safe house three minutes later. He turned to check that the coast was clear, then ducked into the garden. Peele opened the front door and welcomed him inside. He was wearing shorts and looked characteristically dishevelled. He appeared to be alone in the house.

  ‘Where’s Carl?’ Kite asked.

  Peele’s eyes went up to the ceiling. ‘Sleeping,’ he said in a quiet voice. ‘He was up all night transcribing conversations from the villa.’

  ‘So the tentacles are working?’ Kite asked.

  Peele nodded. ‘Lots of interesting material. The Cathedral is sitting up and taking notice.’

  The Cathedral had become a mythical place in Kite’s imagination. BOX 88 was headquartered in a small residential block somewhere in central London. The buildings could be accessed both from the street and via a church where the incumbent vicar, a former Royal Marine, had been discreetly placed on the payroll. Kite had been told that he would be taken to The Cathedral once the operation against Eskandarian was concluded. For this reason, it had always felt as though he was on a period of probation and must prove himself over the summer if he was to be granted access to BOX 88’s inner sanctum.

  ‘What kind of things are they saying?’ he asked.

  ‘You can’t know what you shouldn’t know,’ Peele replied. ‘If I tell you what Eskandarian is concerned about, the sorts of things Luc is saying on the telephone, we’d be leading the witness. It’s best you’re left in the dark. You’ll behave more naturally that way.’

  ‘What’s Luc go to do with it?’ Kite asked.

  He recognised the sudden look of regret on Peele’s face. He had seen it before, at Alford, when Peele had told him that Lionel Jones-Lewis was refusing to recommend Kite for a place at Oxford.

  ‘We’re now looking at Xavier’s father just as much as we’re looking at Ali. That’s all I can say.’

  Kite was stunned. ‘At Luc? Why?’

  Peele turned the palms of his hands towards Kite, indicating that he had just asked the sort of question he had been told was out of bounds.

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ he said. ‘You’re doing a great job.’

  ‘I don’t want to do a great job if it gets Xavier’s dad in trouble,’ he said.

  Peele deliberately, and very obviously, switched the direction of the conversation.

  ‘We don’t have much time,’ he said. ‘Coffee?’

  ‘Of course I worry about it.’

  ‘If Luc’s father gets into trouble with the law, that’s his fault, not yours.’

  ‘In trouble how?’

  ‘Coffee?’ Peele repeated.

  ‘Fine. Black. Two sugars. Yes, please.’

  Kite was still slightly out of breath from the run, but not as exhausted nor as hungover as he had felt on the first morning. There was a bottle of Volvic on the table in front of him. He drank two glasses in quick succession while Peele fetched him a mug of coffee from the kitchen. It was lukewarm. He hadn’t added any sugar. Kite drank it without complaint, remembering Xavier’s stoned, drunken words on the first night: Luc Bonnard is a good man, not a bad man. Daddy never puts a foot wrong. My father does business with Ali Eskandarian.

  ‘So, Lockie!’ Peele rubbed his hands together expectantly. ‘What’s the news across the road?’

  Kite immediately told him about Abbas’s trip to New York. Peele wrote down the flight details, the names of the men mentioned in the letter and the information about Karrubi’s hotel. He checked the spelling of ‘Berberian’ with Kite and said he would pass the information to Rita.

  ‘Isn’t Ali supposed to be in Lisbon at the end of August?’ Kite asked.

  ‘Absolutely,’ Peele replied. ‘Either he’s going to have what looks like a last-minute change of heart and get on a flight to New York or Abbas is going alone.’

  ‘You think he could be scouting the place out, meeting these people to discuss the next steps?’

  Peele indicated that he didn’t want to speculate, but Kite judged from his reaction that he was concerned about what Abbas was up to. He finished his coffee and, prompted to move on, recounted the meeting with Bijan, relating in as much detail as possible the content of their conversation, as well as Bijan’s manner and appearance. Peele listened very carefully, occasionally taking notes on a lined yellow pad, but appeared to be less interested in Bijan’s views on life in modern Iran than in his remarks concerning the Bonnard party’s movements around Cannes.

  ‘He said that he’d seen you eating lunch? Were you aware of anyone watching you?’

  ‘No. I assumed he’d somehow recognised Eskandarian on the beach and followed us into town, or vice versa. Maybe he saw us in the window of the restaurant and waited.’

  ‘And he was alone?’

  ‘As far as I’m aware. He said he lived in Cannes. That France was now his home. He implied that he was part of an opposition to the ayatollah, or whoever is in charge now.’ Peele said ‘Rafsanjani’ and underlined something on the pad. ‘He said that he lived in fear of his life. That his friends had been abducted and tortured by associates of Ali Eskandarian.’

  Peele looked up. ‘He used that exact wording?’

  Kite paused and trie
d to remember precisely what Bijan had told him.

  ‘No. It was more of a general attack on Ali. He’s friends with the Iranian government, therefore he’s responsible for making this guy’s life miserable.’

  Peele crossed something out. ‘Go on,’ he said.

  ‘He mentioned that somebody, an Iranian general who worked for the shah, had been assassinated in Paris, his brother as well.’

  ‘Gholam Oveissi,’ Peele replied instantly. ‘That was years ago.’

  ‘Yes. Him.’ Kite had grown so accustomed to the depth of Peele’s memory that he was unsurprised he knew Oveissi’s name. ‘He said the Americans or the British tipped off the Iranians who carried out the assassinations. Is that true?’

  ‘Highly unlikely,’ Peele replied. ‘On what basis?’

  It didn’t look as though he expected Kite to have an answer to this question. Peele turned a page on the pad as a telephone rang upstairs. Kite had yet to see any of the rooms on the upper level of the house. He knew that one of them had been turned into a listening post.

  ‘Boss?’

  It was Carl, shouting from the top of the stairs. Peele called out: ‘Lockie’s here, is it urgent?’ and apologised to Kite for the interruption.

  ‘Sorry,’ Carl replied. ‘Didn’t realise. I’ll tell her to call later.’

  Peele rolled his eyes and indicated that Kite should resume. Kite longed for a cigarette but knew that he couldn’t return from his run stinking of smoke.

  ‘Bijan said he was worried about another guy in France,’ he said. ‘I can’t remember his name off the top of my head. Another Iranian who worked for the shah. Surname sounded a bit like “baksheesh”.’

  ‘Shahpour Bakhtiar?’ Peele summoned the name with the same speed with which he had retrieved Gholam Oveissi from the vault of his memory. ‘Yes, he’s a marked man. Why do you think he was telling you all this?’

  Kite shrugged. He could feel the sweat on his back cooling beneath his shirt. ‘I dunno. It was like he was lonely or wanted somebody harmless to have a rant at. At the end he gave me his number.’

  Peele grinned. ‘Oh good.’

  Kite reached into the back pocket of his shorts and pulled out the piece of paper. It was crumpled and slightly damp. Peele straightened it out, immediately made a note of the number on the yellow pad and passed it back.

  ‘Strange,’ he said, a remark Kite interpreted as a question about Bijan’s intentions.

  ‘I thought maybe it was a test,’ he replied. ‘Either you’d sent him to make sure I wasn’t going to panic and everything was still OK, or maybe Ali or Abbas had paid him to check me out.’

  ‘None of the above.’ Peele ran a hand through his hair. ‘We’ve heard plenty of conversations between Ali and Abbas. Falcons wired the Audi while you were in the restaurant in Cannes. There hasn’t been a squeak on the lamp or the Gameboy. Eskandarian has been concerned about activity from exiled opposition groups more or less since he arrived. Has told Abbas to keep an eye out.’

  Kite craved the transcripts of their conversations, to know what was being said, to understand why Luc had fallen under suspicion. Xavier might even know what Peele now knew; that Luc was involved in a corrupt business relationship with Eskandarian, perhaps by default with the Iranian government itself.

  ‘Before I forget,’ said Peele. ‘The batteries on the Gameboy have died. Can you get it back and replace them?’

  Kite nodded. Retrieving the Gameboy, replacing the batteries and putting it back behind the chest of drawers would be difficult, even hazardous, but he didn’t want to admit this. BOX 88 had hired him because they knew that he wouldn’t shirk a challenge.

  ‘There’s also your Walkman. Don’t forget that. Why isn’t it in play? You took three days to get the ghetto blaster where we wanted it, we still haven’t had a squeak out of—’

  It occurred to Kite that from Peele’s point of view it might have looked as though he wasn’t doing very much to keep up his end of the bargain. Two late nights, a lot of time spent by the pool, expensive meals in restaurants, dancing and drinking in nightclubs. ‘There just hasn’t been the right opportunity. I don’t know which rooms you want covered. I can’t get up to the attic and leave the Walkman there. If Ali finds it, I’m screwed.’

  ‘You certainly are,’ Peele concurred. He waved a hand in front of his face as if he regretted putting Kite under unnecessary pressure.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘You’re doing marvellously well.’ He flashed him a reassuring smile. ‘Tell me about Eskandarian in general. Your impression of him as a person now that three days have gone past. No right or wrong answer. Just what comes to mind.’

  Kite had prepared one or two things to say and began by remarking on how relaxed Eskandarian seemed. The Iranian was far more westernised than he had expected. He repeated what Ali had said to him at the bar of the nightclub: Iran has become a religious society. It does not tolerate western music, however much some of us enjoy it.

  Peele picked up on this.

  ‘Become a religious society? He stressed that? As if it was unexpected or something that he didn’t like?’

  ‘Definitely the second one.’ Kite craved more coffee. ‘He seemed frustrated that things were as strict as they are out there. When he said that people liked listening to Peter Gabriel, Elton John, whatever, he was including himself in that. Christ, his girlfriend was dancing to Simple Minds and he went out to join her.’

  ‘In front of the bodyguard?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Kite registered that Peele had asked about Abbas. ‘Then last night we got back and he was listening to U2, Queen. Loves that stuff. Tucked into the whisky. If I didn’t know him, I’d say he was just a normal guy, a businessman from London or Paris who knows Luc, not some close ally of radical Muslim madmen who want to knife Salman Rushdie.’

  ‘Well, he was never going to be that,’ Peele replied, with a very slight note of condescension. ‘You should go in a minute.’ Then suddenly: ‘How’s the girl?’

  Kite felt his cheeks reddening. He could not look his former schoolmaster in the eye. For an awful, paranoid moment he wondered if BOX 88 knew everything that had gone on beside the pool just a few hours earlier. Christ, maybe Carl or Peele had seen what had happened between Xavier and Hana.

  ‘She’s great, thanks.’

  ‘You two involved?’

  It was a trick question, a test. Kite felt cornered, reluctant to lie but unwilling to give up a precious part of his privacy.

  ‘We like each other,’ he said. ‘It won’t interfere with my work.’

  ‘Never said it would! She’s a lovely girl, Lockie. You’re a lucky man. And Hana?’

  Kite had no intention of telling Peele about her involvement with Xavier. It was relevant to the operation, but only in as far as it would put Hana in hot water if she was found out. Instead he said: ‘She’s fun. Very sexy. Doesn’t say much. Gets on well with Jacqui.’

  ‘How is Eskandarian around her? Treats her like a bit of crumpet or is it more serious?’

  Kite had a flash memory of Xavier’s ivory hips thrusting in the moonlight, Hana transporting him to heaven and back on bended knee.

  ‘Big age gap,’ he replied. ‘I haven’t heard her say anything political, anything about Iran. They’ve been into Mougins together. Abbas looks at her like she’s dipped in shit. Very disapproving.’

  ‘Really?’ Again Peele seemed interested in the bodyguard’s reaction. ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘Can’t be easy for him watching his boss sleeping with a Vietnamese supermodel every night, then Martha and Jacqui and Rosamund lying by the pool in their bikinis while he gets sweaty in a suit and has to mind his own business. Martha says she catches him eyeing them up the whole time.’

  ‘Can’t blame him,’ Peele sighed. Kite resented the remark without saying anything. ‘So listen …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I want you to do something for me.’

  ‘Shoot,’ said Kite.

  ‘Go to
Eskandarian. Find an appropriate moment. Tell him you need to speak to him in private, away from Luc, away from Abbas, away from Hana. He’s bound to agree. He obviously likes you, he’ll be concerned. Then tell him, word for word, about your encounter with Bijan. Don’t say he gave you his phone number. Make out that you were appalled to hear some of the things that go on in Iran and can’t believe they’re true. You felt obliged to tell Ali about the approach. Play the innocent public schoolboy. Butter wouldn’t melt, etcetera. See if he confirms or denies what Bijan told you or lands somewhere in the middle. Either way, he’ll start to trust you. Do you think you could do that?’

  It sounded easy. Kite said that he was looking forward to it. Peele consulted the yellow pad.

  ‘Did you have the sense that Bijan knew where Eskandarian was staying?’

  ‘None. And I kept looking behind our taxi on the way home for a tail, but there was nobody there.’

  ‘Good. Well done.’ He tapped the pen on the lined yellow paper and conjured a further plan. ‘After you’ve spoken to Ali, go into Mougins, use the phone box at the supermarket and call Bijan. We’ve got it covered, we’ll see you going in. Tell him you want to meet up. Make him feel like you’re on his side, that you can’t stop thinking about what he told you in Cannes, that you want to help broker a meeting with Eskandarian.’

  Kite recalled his promise to take Martha into Mougins after breakfast on the back of the Vespa. He couldn’t tell Peele that, but it would look suspicious if he made two trips in one day.

  ‘Where would a meeting take place?’ he asked.

  ‘Get him to suggest somewhere. He won’t want to come to the house, he might give you an address in Mougins or back in Cannes. With any luck, it’ll be his apartment or somewhere used by opposition groups. Write down the address in case there’s a problem with the line and the Falcons don’t catch it. If he says he needs more time, tell him you’ll try to call back later. If he asks for the number at the house, tell him you don’t know it. If he asks why you’re calling from a phone box, tell him you didn’t want anyone listening in. OK?’