When the guests had first arrived and were talking on the terrace with glasses of rosé and white wine, Kite had concentrated his attention on Bita and Eskandarian, knowing that BOX would want to know more about their relationship. There was clearly a deep fondness between them, both in the way that they spoke to one another and in their body language. Eskandarian was enormously attentive towards her children, but José quickly grew bored of the grown-up talk and tried to encourage his mother to go for a walk with him in the garden. Sensing an opportunity, Kite offered to play with José and took him down to the pool, where Jacqui and Martha were doing their best to avoid joining the lunch party until the last possible moment.
‘I want to swim!’ José cried out in French when he saw the pool. The two girls instantly stood up from their sunloungers and started cooing over the divine Spanish boy. Moments later Annette, the young French mother who had also brought her children to the villa, emerged from beneath the fallen fronds of the palm tree holding her son and daughter by the hand. Kite found a spare pair of swimming trunks in the hut for José and they all jumped in the pool. Kite extracted Annette’s surname – Mouret – and discovered that her husband knew Luc well but had never met Eskandarian before. When Annette began talking to Martha and Jacqui, Kite found out where José lived in Barcelona (a suburb called Sarrià), where he went to school and if he had ever been introduced to Luc or Eskandarian before (he had not). He also learned the boy’s surname: Zamora. All this took place amid the general joyful chaos of an early afternoon swim: Kite and Martha ducking one another; Annette’s children showing off how long they could hold their breath underwater; Xavier appearing from nowhere, bombing into the water to the annoyance of his sister but to the screams and delight of the children. Kite was aware that his deceptions had become so commonplace that he was spying almost without being aware of it.
In due course Rosamund called out, ‘Lunch!’ and the group gathered on the terrace to eat a three-course lunch prepared by Rosamund and Hélène. Kite was seated between Xavier and Martha, at the opposite end of the table to Jacques, Luc and Paul. He hoped that the ghetto blaster – which was still plugged in behind the sofa – would capture their conversation, but had a hunch that any potentially sensitive exchanges between them would take place behind closed doors in Luc’s office, where the Gameboy had long since ceased to function.
The swim had forged a bond between Kite and the children, particularly with Bita’s son, José, who hung on his every word. After lunch, Luc invited his guests to join him on a walk around the property, an invitation taken up by all of the adults with the exception of Annette, Martha, Xavier and Kite. Ada, Bita’s three-year-old daughter, was asleep in a hammock in the garden. Annette promised to keep an eye on her so that Bita could join the walk.
It was only as Kite was losing sight of Abbas and Eskandarian on the drive that the idea came to him. He had chanced on an opportunity to photograph the documents in Eskandarian’s office. But how to do so without raising Xavier or Martha’s suspicion? They were planning to watch a video with the kids. How to get away from the television room for long enough that his absence wouldn’t be noticed? And how to do so without Martha wanting to come with him?
‘I’ve got an idea,’ Kite announced. They were all in the sitting room, helping Alain and Hélène to clear up lunch. Moments earlier Kite had taken his camera back upstairs and changed the roll of film. He turned to the children. ‘Do you guys like playing hide-and-seek?’
Xavier groaned and said: ‘Thought we were going to watch Temple of Doom?’ But the children all squealed in delight. Annette agreed that it would be an excellent idea as long as they didn’t wake Ada.
‘Then let’s play in the house,’ Kite replied. The tactic had fallen into his lap, a moment of pure good fortune. He appointed Martha and Xavier as the chief hunters and divided the rest of the group into three teams: Annette would be with her son, Jacqui with Annette’s daughter, and Kite with José.
‘Fair?’ he asked.
They all agreed that the teams were perfect. Xavier and Martha remained in the sitting room and said that they would count to a hundred. The garden and the pool were pronounced out of bounds, but every other area of the house was in play.
‘Just don’t make a mess in my room,’ Xavier grumbled. Jacqui told him not to be so selfish.
As soon as Martha had closed her eyes and started counting, Kite grabbed José by the hand and sprinted up to the first floor. Momentarily leaving the boy on the landing, he grabbed the Olympus Trip from his room then ran up the stairs to the attic beckoning the giggling José to follow him, all the while urging him to be as quiet as possible.
Kite pushed open the door of Eskandarian’s bedroom. He pressed his fingers to his lips and whispered in French: ‘Hide behind the door. I’ll be in the room on the other side.’
From two floors below he heard Martha shouting out: ‘Three, two, one … coming!’ as José froze in a tableau of excitement, stifling a delighted giggle. Kite showed him where to hide, willed him to stay where he was, and went back out onto the landing. He then closed the bedroom door and moved as quickly as possible into the office.
He shut the door behind him and took the camera out of his back pocket. There were several piles of correspondence on the far side of the office, some of it in envelopes, some of it open on Eskandarian’s desk. Crossing the room, Kite held the lens over the desk as he had been instructed and took a photograph of the closest letter. The snap of the clicking shutter, of the reel winding on, seemed deafening. He had practised in the Hampstead flat and remembered Peele telling him not to think about the noise. Kite was aware that his hand was shaking slightly and his breath quickening as he lifted the letter, placed it upside-down on the desk beside him and photographed the document underneath. There were seven pieces of paper in all, some covered in Farsi, others in French. He kept the camera steady with his right hand and moved the pages with his left, putting them back as he had found them at the end of the process. One careless slip or sudden draught from the partly-open window and Eskandarian’s correspondence would be scattered to the floor. Kite didn’t look at what he was photographing nor reason that one piece of paper might be more valuable than another. There was no time to take any letters out of their envelopes, only to photograph what was visible on the desk.
A sound from the opposite bedroom but – as far as Kite could tell – no noise yet from the floors below. He made sure that the desk looked as he had found it, then turned around. Eskandarian had scrawled a list of names and numbers on a piece of A4 paper which had been left on the sofa. Kite photographed it. As he lowered the camera, he looked closer at two of the names: David Foreman, several times underlined and now spelled with an added ‘e’, and Asef Berberian, after which Eskandarian had added two question marks. They were the same two names Kite had seen in the text of the letter from Abbas’s suit pocket. What was the connection? He desperately wanted more time to comb the office for anything relating to New York, to the Air France flight or the Grand Hyatt Hotel. If Eskandarian was using the Lisbon conference as cover and planning to visit New York with Abbas under alias, BOX could follow him every step of the way. But why the question marks after Berberian? And why was Forman’s name now aggressively underlined and spelled in a different way?
A scream from the first floor. At least one of the children had been discovered. Martha shouted: ‘Found you!’ There was an eruption of laughter. Kite knew that he had no more than twenty seconds before Martha or Xavier bounded up the stairs.
He looked around the office. What else might be of interest to BOX? He grabbed a diary from the desk, crouched down behind the armchair so that he would be plausibly out of sight if someone came into the room, and began to take photographs. He flicked through the entries for July, August and September. It was in weekly format. He took photos for every page as quickly and as steadily as possible. While holding down the pages for the second week of September, he heard a noise on the stairs and knew he
must stop. He took the shot, stuffed the camera into his back pocket and closed the diary.
José was the first to be discovered. The little boy squealed in delighted frustration as Martha opened the door of the bedroom and said: ‘There you are! Found you!’ in English. Kite was next. Martha came into the room to find him cowering behind the chair.
‘That’s the worst hiding place I’ve ever seen,’ she said. ‘What are you doing down there? At least make an effort.’ José was beside her, grinning. Kite held her gaze for a beat, sharing the moment with her. ‘Come on then!’ Martha said to José, taking him by the hand. ‘Lockie’s useless at hiding. Let’s go and get the others.’
They left the room. Kite walked around the chair, put the diary back on the desk and followed them. In his hyped-up state, he half-expected to run into Eskandarian or Abbas on the first floor, but they were not yet back from their walk. He ducked into his bedroom, left the camera on the chest of drawers and headed downstairs to the hall.
Jacqui was the last to be found, huddled with Annette’s daughter at the bottom of the garden in what Xavier described as ‘a clear breach of the fucking rules’. Jacqui said that she couldn’t remember Kite saying anything about not hiding in the garden, to which even Martha said: ‘Oh come on, Jacks’ and the game ended on a slightly sour note.
‘Does this mean you were the last person to be found?’ José asked.
‘It does,’ Kite replied, ruffling his hair.
The little boy leaped up and down on the sofa in the sitting room, shouting: ‘Lockie won! Lockie won!’ Martha looked at Kite and murmured: ‘You’ve made a friend for life.’ Moments later there were voices outside, the polite chit-chat of Rosamund, the booming laughter of Eskandarian. José, sensing that his mother was coming back from her walk, jumped down from the sofa. At lunch he had eaten two bowls of Hélène’s famously rich chocolate mousse and the sugars were kicking in.
There was a rug at the end of the room which was forever shifting on the varnished floor. Martha called out: ‘Careful, José’ but the hurrying little boy was oblivious to her warning. Shouting, ‘Mama! Mama!’ he ran at full pelt towards the hall, his body at a slight angle as he turned towards the door. His left foot landed on a corner of the loose rug which slipped beneath him. José lost his balance and careered sideways, striking his head on the doorjamb.
‘José!’
The impact was an awful soft thud of bone and tissue. Bita was in the hall and could hear her son’s screams. Martha covered her mouth and ran towards the stricken child. Xavier said: ‘Bambi on ice’ and went to fetch a tea towel from the kitchen.
Bedlam ensued. Bita was hugging the frightened, screaming boy. Luc demanded to know what had happened and looked embarrassed that the accident had occurred while guests were visiting the house. Annette apologised to Bita for not keeping a closer eye on her son while Jacques stood coolly by the front door wincing at the shrieks of pain. Kite felt wretched. Out of everyone, he had spent the most time with José. It was he who had suggested the extra bowl of chocolate mousse and the game of hide-and-seek which had wound the boy up into such a state of excitement. Now he was bleeding profusely from a deep gash on his forehead, just above the hairline.
‘He’ll need a doctor,’ said Rosamund. ‘He’ll have to go to hospital and have it stitched up.’
It was at this point that Eskandarian appeared at the bottom of the stairs. He had gone up to his room after returning from the walk and had heard the pandemonium from the attic. When he saw that it was José who had been hurt, he cried out: ‘Non!’ and rushed towards him, enveloping Bita and the boy in a desperate, protective hug.
Xavier looked at Kite and rolled his eyes, withdrawing to the sitting room. Kite followed him.
‘What was that about?’ he asked. He had been surprised by the intensity of Eskandarian’s reaction.
‘Didn’t you realise?’ his friend replied, as if Kite was being stupid. ‘Bita was pregnant when Ali left for Iran. José is his son.’
46
Kite was alone with Torabi. He was seated in the chair, his hands tied behind his back. He repeated what Xavier had said to him in the sitting room. He told Torabi that Eskandarian had then accompanied Bita Zamora to the hospital in Cannes. The young José had received seven stitches in his forehead, just above the hairline.
‘Seven stitches,’ Torabi replied blankly. ‘Yes, I know.’
There was a moment between them, a span of time in which Kite’s understanding of what was taking place underwent a profound and sudden change. It was like one of those paintings he would occasionally see in galleries which looked from one angle like an abstract and from another, with just a minor adjustment of perspective, like a portrait or landscape. Torabi gazed at him, his eyes momentarily stripped of all malice, and the truth broke over Kite with a startling, euphoric clarity.
‘You’re José,’ he said. ‘You’re the boy.’
Torabi’s expression did not change. He pulled back a clump of hair, tipped his head forward and showed Kite a pale white scar running from the top of his forehead into the hairline.
‘Yes. Bita is my mother. Ali was my father.’
Everything became clear in that moment: the uneven interrogation; Torabi’s occasional moments of nervousness and uncertainty; his desperate desire to know anything and everything about Eskandarian. This wasn’t a state mission authorised by MOIS. Torabi wasn’t following orders. This was personal.
‘Why didn’t you say something?’ Kite asked.
‘Why should I? You would only have lied in a different way.’
It was necessary for Kite to say: ‘For the last time, I am not lying,’ but he knew that Torabi had set a trap for him. It was not at all clear to Kite how much the Iranian remembered of that distant summer afternoon. Was it possible that he had heard the eighteen-year-old Kite in the attic office taking pictures with the Olympus Trip, the click and roll of the camera audible across the landing? Did he know more than he was letting on about what had happened to Eskandarian? Not for the first time Kite wondered if Torabi had a line into BOX 88, access to an individual who was drip-feeding him secrets.
‘I wanted to listen to your memories of that day and see if they matched my own,’ he said.
Kite adopted an impassive manner. ‘And did they?’ He remembered what he had left out of the account – the questions he had asked José in the pool, the camera he had grabbed from his room with the little boy standing beside him – details which José might possibly have remembered.
Torabi reached for the gun. He moved his head from side to side, like an athlete warming up for a sprint, and rose from the sofa.
‘I remember that you were kind to me,’ he said, securing the gun in the waistband of his trousers. ‘I remember swimming in the pool with Martha and Jacqui. I remember the long outside table covered in food, my sister sleeping in a hammock in the garden.’
‘It was a beautiful house,’ Kite replied, feeling the nail slip against his hip. Throughout his long account of what had happened that summer, he had dared not look down and risk drawing Torabi’s eyes towards the pocket. ‘It was a beautiful afternoon. Do you remember going to the hospital with your mother and father?’
Torabi crossed the room and leaned against the door.
‘I didn’t know he was my father until many years later.’
‘When you joined the MOIS?’
To Kite’s surprise, Torabi did not deny that he had been recruited by Iranian intelligence.
‘My mother died when I was twenty years old,’ he said. ‘My stepfather had betrayed her long before that. She told me shortly before she died that Ali Eskandarian was my biological father. I didn’t want to stay in Spain. I wanted to live in Iran as an Iranian. It is true that I worked for the MOIS. I no longer work for them.’ Torabi paused, as if he expected Kite to applaud him for his candour. ‘I was recently able to obtain some intelligence files relating to my father, but they did not provide the answers I was seeking. I decided to fi
nd out what happened for myself. So: is it true my father insisted on accompanying my mother to the hospital?’
‘Everything I told you is true,’ Kite replied. He was still calculating what omissions he had made that Torabi might recognise as evidence of his duplicity. ‘When Abbas insisted on going to the hospital with your father, he shouted at him and ordered him to remain at the house.’
‘Why?’
‘Because he wanted to be alone with you? Because he didn’t want Abbas knowing that he had continued to visit your mother after 1979 and that she had borne him a secret child?’
Torabi bristled at this, as Kite should have anticipated. It had been a slip. The idea of his father concealing, even denying his existence, was clearly abhorrent to him.
‘What about your friend?’ Torabi asked. ‘Xavier?’
‘What about him?’
‘He was with Hana in the way you described? Did they continue to see each other after the summer?’
Of all the questions Torabi might have asked, this was the one that Kite had least anticipated. The incident at the poolhouse had helped to burnish Xavier’s legend as a ladies’ man when he went up to Oxford the following year, but as far as Kite knew, he had never seen nor heard from Hana again.
Box 88 : A Novel (2020) Page 36