Box 88 : A Novel (2020)

by Cumming, Charles

  ‘No, it’s fine!’ Kite replied quickly. ‘It’s so kind of you to be taking us all out tonight.’

  ‘My pleasure, Lockie.’

  ‘Luc! Darling!’

  Now Rosamund was calling to him from the hall. She walked into the study, bustling around like a hostess moments before the start of a party.

  ‘What are you three talking about?’ she said. ‘Aren’t you getting changed for dinner, darling? We have to leave in ten minutes.’

  ‘Ten minutes?’ Luc replied in a dazed manner. ‘Why so soon?’

  ‘The restaurant could only take all of us at seven,’ she replied. ‘Didn’t you listen? Come on!’ She looked briefly at the Gameboy in Luc’s hand. ‘You too, Lockie. This is no time to teach my husband Tetris. Wheels turning at half-past six.’

  Luc waited until both his wife and Eskandarian had left the room.

  ‘We can discuss this later,’ he said.

  ‘Discuss what?’ Kite replied. ‘I still don’t understand.’

  ‘Yes, you do,’ Luc replied ominously. ‘You know exactly what I’m worried about.’

  52

  All the way to the restaurant Kite sat in the back seat of the BMW listening to Martha, Xavier and Jacqui casually chatting to Rosamund without a care in the world. For Kite, it was like driving towards a public hanging. He knew that it was only a matter of time before they returned to the villa and Luc confronted him with his treachery. He could picture the scene. All the major players would be standing in the hall: the Bonnards, Martha, Abbas, Alain and Hélène. Luc would be holding the doctored innards of the Nintendo, explaining to Eskandarian that the Gameboy had been transformed into a voice-activated microphone with a radio transmitter relaying conversations from the office to a listening post somewhere nearby. By then Abbas would have checked Kite’s bedroom, found the Walkman and brought it downstairs. Like some bit-part player in a country house murder mystery, Hélène would reveal to the assembled company that a lamp had been moved on the day of the Bonnards’ arrival. She had come across Monsieur Lockie acting suspiciously in the attic. Abbas would duly fetch the lamp and break it open. Kite would be finished.

  He worked through his options. He could call Peele from the restaurant and get somebody to go to the villa, remove the microphone from the lamp and replace his Walkman with a copy. But how would BOX have the time and the wherewithal to do that, especially with Alain and Hélène lurking around? Kite already knew what Peele would say: ‘Stop worrying, Lockie. You’re overthinking things. If the shit hits the fan, your luggage was tampered with at some point between London and Charles de Gaulle. The Frogs took advantage of you. Nobody in their right mind would accuse you of being a spy.’ Kite tried to believe that he had the nerve and the tenacity to keep lying indefinitely, but was worried that the longer he did so, the more doubt would be sown in the minds of Martha and Xavier. Above all, he did not want them ever to learn of his treachery. What he had done was for Queen and country, for the future of Iran, to prevent the attack in New York. He had never meant to hurt anyone.

  Luc was alone with Eskandarian in the Mercedes. The two men had said that they needed to talk. Rosamund had encouraged this, saying: ‘Yes, you two kiss and make up after last night.’ Kite suspected that Luc was going to tell Eskandarian about a possible intrusion in his office. Abbas had driven ahead to the restaurant, ostensibly to check security. Kite hoped to God there was a plain-clothes team of BOX 88 Closers in Vence who would protect Eskandarian, Martha and the rest of the group from any attack, if and when it came.

  Their table, inevitably, was outside, at the edge of a busy square in the centre of Vence. Both Luc and Eskandarian emerged from the Mercedes in an upbeat mood, which Kite took as a small sign of encouragement. Abbas took up his post at a neighbouring table, smoking a cigarette and drinking a glass of water, without seeming to be unusually nervous or agitated. Nevertheless, when the time came for Eskandarian to seat his guests, Kite held Martha back so that she would not be next to Eskandarian during the meal. Instead, that honour fell to Kite himself, and to Rosamund, who was seated to the right of the Iranian.

  It was a typically warm August evening. Several families with young children were eating dinner at the outdoor tables, but it was still early enough for many of the locals and tourists still to be enjoying aperitifs and cups of coffee as the sun went down. Directly behind Eskandarian, a toddler in a high chair was having baby food spooned into his mouth by an exhausted mother with a Scottish accent. The toddler’s slightly older brother was throwing pizza crusts onto the ground and screaming in frustration, much to his father’s annoyance.

  ‘I don’t know why we didn’t just feed them at the house,’ he hissed as another chunk of ham landed on the square.

  ‘Because I’m sick of cooking and cleaning up,’ his wife replied, on the verge of tears. Kite wondered if a spoonful of baby food would soon flick onto the back of Eskandarian’s shirt or plop into Rosamund’s Kir. The thought made him feel slightly more relaxed and he tried to distract himself, concentrating on the back-and-forth chat at the table and occasionally joining in whenever he could think of something constructive to add to the conversation.

  The attack, when it came, happened so fast that Kite was not fully aware of the threat when the van pulled up on the road and stopped in front of the table. For the first few seconds it felt as though a vehicle supplying food to the restaurant had perhaps gone to the wrong entrance or that the van was stopping only momentarily so that it could be loaded with flowers from a nearby stall. Looking back, Kite unconsciously took his cue from Abbas, who did not move from his seat as the van applied its brakes, emitting a burst of thick black exhaust fumes. Rosamund coughed and waved a hand in front of her face saying: ‘Goodness, is that really necessary when we’re all trying to eat?’ Then the meal and the beautiful summer evening and the easy talk at the table came to an end.

  The back doors of the van burst open and a man in a red balaclava jumped down. He was holding a handgun. Simultaneously a second armed man, his face concealed by a black bandana, leaped down from the passenger seat and moved quickly towards the tables. Later, giving statements to the French police, both Kite and Martha would tell them that the man in the black bandana deliberately targeted Abbas, not Eskandarian, so as to remove the possibility that he could prevent the attack. Before Eskandarian’s bodyguard had so much as moved from his seat, the man had fired two shots at his chest from a distance of no more than three metres. In the ensuing panic, Kite instinctively moved to protect Martha, who had gone to Abbas to try to help him. At the same time the man in the red balaclava seized the back of Eskandarian’s head, drove it forward twice onto the hard table, then dragged him, with the assistance of a third man, into the back of the van.

  Seeing what was happening, Kite did what he could to prevent Eskandarian from being taken. Rushing towards the man in the red balaclava, he wrapped his arms around his waist, only to receive an elbow in the face which hit him with such force that he was knocked backwards onto the table, bringing plates and glasses and cutlery crashing down around him. Eskandarian himself was kicking out and shouting in Farsi, but the men easily overpowered him, and he was bundled into the vehicle.

  Kite was on the ground trying to make a mental note of the number plate when he heard the gunshot. With Eskandarian safely inside the van, the man in the red balaclava had closed one of the rear doors and was trying to shut the other. With what life remained to him, Abbas fired and hit him in the chest as he was closing the second door. Somebody inside shouted a word Kite assumed meant ‘Go!’ in Farsi and the driver accelerated away, the rear door slamming shut as the van moved off. A moped, parked on the edge of the square, was knocked to one side and the flower stall smashed as the vehicle made its getaway. Within less than a minute, the men had come and gone, taking Eskandarian with them.

  53

  ‘Why do you think they shot the bodyguard?’ Torabi asked. ‘Why did they target Abbas?’

  Kite had said no
thing to Torabi about Peele’s visit to the house or Abbas’s betrayal of Eskandarian.

  ‘I suppose they wanted to get rid of him because he was a threat. He had met Bijan, he had seen his face. Why let him live? The exile group wanted him out of the picture. They needed to sever the link so that Eskandarian wouldn’t be found.’

  ‘But Bijan was found dead only a day later. He and all his associates, killed when the French police stormed their apartment in Cannes.’

  ‘I know,’ Kite replied.

  ‘But they didn’t find my father.’

  Kite shrugged. ‘No, they didn’t,’ he said, concerned that Torabi’s line of questioning suggested he knew more than he was letting on. ‘I always assumed Ali was killed that night, at the very latest the next morning.’

  ‘Why did they not shoot him in the restaurant?’

  ‘You’re asking the wrong man!’ Kite replied. ‘I have no idea. The Americans I spoke to after the attack said that it was possible they intended to ransom him, to put his face on television as a way of bringing the world’s attention to what was happening in Iran. That he was being held at an unknown location when Bijan and his comrades were killed. Once that happened, the exiles cut their losses and murdered your father.’

  Torabi nodded, as if this was a more plausible version of events. Kite had lost the feeling in his left arm and asked if Kamran, who was standing by the door, would release his hands so that he could move around and stretch. The request was ignored.

  ‘You saw the three men in bandanas and balaclavas?’

  ‘Of course. I tried to restrain one of them.’

  ‘Yes. Xavier told me that. He told me you were very brave.’

  Kite did not know how to respond. He felt that Xavier had betrayed him by speaking to Torabi, endangering Isobel’s life in doing so. Yet he could not blame his friend for his anger and confusion. He was glad, at least, that Xavier had verified his account of the kidnapping. He had never known the full truth.

  ‘Did you recognise Bijan?’

  Kite lied and said: ‘Yes, a part of me thought that the man who shot Abbas looked a bit like Bijan. The way he moved, his size, that sort of thing.’

  ‘But he was not the man in the red balaclava. The one who was shot as the van was leaving?’

  ‘No, not him,’ Kite replied.

  ‘Who was he?’ Torabi asked.

  Kite winced and said: ‘I have no idea. I only ever met Bijan. The worst of it was that Luc didn’t try to save his children, didn’t do anything to protect Rosamund. As soon as he saw that Abbas had been shot, he panicked and a kind of fight-or-flight impulse kicked in. He ran inside the restaurant. Jacqui saw him go and shouted ‘Daddy!’ and followed him. The baby in the highchair toppled over and was crying on the ground. The other children were screaming. It was awful, the worst thing I’ve ever seen, still to this day. There was blood everywhere, total panic, the realisation that Abbas had been shot, that he was dying right there in front of everyone, and Ali had been kidnapped. It was horrific.’

  Torabi sat down on the sofa.

  ‘What else?’ he said. ‘What else do you remember from that day?’

  Kite was concerned that Torabi was holding something back. Did he have access to a better source than Xavier, someone who knew the truth about Eskandarian? He knew that his time was running out. In his long and detailed version of events, this was the natural point at which Eskandarian’s story came to an end.

  ‘The truth is I’ve never looked back,’ he said. ‘I never wanted to know what they did to your father. It was too painful. Martha and I made a promise never to speak of it. After Luc was arrested, when Xavier and Jacqui had to go through the pain and public embarrassment of seeing their father exposed as a crook, when he was photographed in handcuffs being sent off to prison, well, all we were concerned about was looking after them as friends and giving them the support they needed. Xavier and I spent a lot of time together over the next ten years—’

  Torabi interrupted him.

  ‘He blamed you. He blamed the Americans. He said Bijan and his colleagues knew nothing about the restaurant in Vence. Their plan was to come to the house the next day and kill my father on sight. They weren’t interested in talking to him. They were interested in sending a message.’

  Kite knew that Torabi was close to the truth, but not close enough. He relied on the same lies, the same obfuscations that had seen him through the long hours on the ship.

  ‘When we came home, and later during his time in prison, Luc became obsessed by the idea that the house had been bugged. He found a Gameboy in his office that belonged to me. The screen had been smashed. It was trapped down the back of a chest of drawers in his office.’ It was the first time he had mentioned the Gameboy to Torabi. ‘Luc accused Alain and Hélène of being agents for the CIA who had given them the Nintendo and turned it into a bug, despite the fact that bugs in those days needed a power source, needed to be hooked up to a permanent electric current or they wouldn’t work. Then he wrote a long memoir in prison saying that it was the French authorities who had made him a scapegoat. They didn’t like the fact that Luc had been making money with your father while breaking the sanctions because it was Mitterrand’s cronies who wanted to be filling their boots. You can see how this story has turned into a conspiracy theory over the last thirty years.’

  ‘You are a good liar, Lachlan Kite. I will give you that.’

  Kite shook his head with exaggerated impatience.

  ‘For the last time,’ he said, ‘I am not fucking lying. Everything I’ve told you has been the truth. I just want to get out of here. I’m sorry about what happened to your father. I really am. I liked him. What happened that night scarred me very badly. But you’ll understand that my priority now is my wife, my child. I want all of us to be safe. I want you to stick to your promise and let both of us go.’

  ‘I’m not finished with you yet.’

  Kite knew that he was doomed. He would never leave this place unless he fought his way out. MI5 weren’t going to ride to the rescue. BOX 88 had not been able to isolate where he was being held. He would have to resort to desperate measures in order to get off the ship.

  ‘But when you are finished, you’ll release my wife?’ he pleaded. ‘At least promise me that. At least let my child survive.’

  ‘When you murdered my father?’

  ‘I didn’t murder your father! How dare you say that? How dare you accuse me of such a thing?’

  Torabi nodded at Kamran, who took out a knife, flashing the blade in front of Kite’s eyes. Kite reared back, fearing that he would be cut. Torabi mumbled something in Farsi and the chauffeur moved behind him. He leaned down and sliced off the plastic ties binding his wrists. Kite’s hands fell free. He shook out the numbness in his arms, touching the line of dried blood on his wrist.

  ‘I have a call to make,’ said Torabi, nodding at Kamran. ‘Give him water. Give him food.’

  ‘I need to piss again,’ Kite replied. He knew that the call would be to the team guarding Isobel. He hoped to God that by now it was over and the Closers had freed her.

  Torabi addressed Kamran in English.

  ‘Put a bucket in his room,’ he said. ‘He can piss in that.’

  54

  Jason was standing in the door of the cottage, making what Cara assumed was a call to his superiors at BOX 88. The American was talking in a jumble of code and jargon, the gist of which seemed to involve ordering in a team to remove the bodies and clean up the mess.

  Rita had taken Isobel back to the farm, leaving Cara inside the cottage. The faces of the dead men had not been covered. KAISER and STONES had been through their pockets and searched every room, finding five mobile phones and two laptops which they had placed on a table in the living room. There was blood on the walls and on the ground, but not as much as Cara had been expecting. STONES had mopped up a pool of blood around one corpse using pages from a local newspaper; he was busy taking photographs of the dead man’s face. Cara was al
lowed to walk around freely. She had the odd, slightly hypnotic sensation of being adopted into a cult, as if Kite’s house, and what was going on inside it, was somehow sealed off from the normal world in which normal rules applied.

  STONES moved towards the first Iranian that Jason had shot. He had fallen forward. It was necessary to turn him to one side so that his face could be seen by the camera.

  With a surge of excitement, Cara realised that she recognised him. A full beard around the mouth and chin, no sideburns. It was the man from the passenger seat of the white van. He was wearing the same white shirt, now soaked in blood.

  ‘I’ve seen this guy before,’ she said.

  Jason heard her and stepped closer.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘He was in the front seat of the van which they used to transport Lockie from the car park.’ It amazed her that she was already calling him ‘Lockie’. ‘This guy must have known where they were keeping him.’

  ‘Well he sure as shit isn’t telling us now,’ Jason replied, checking the time on his watch. ‘Which one was his phone?’

  ‘Red one. Samsung,’ STONES replied instantly.

  ‘What’s that smell?’ Cara asked. It wasn’t sweat or blood, it wasn’t aftershave or any of the other odours she might have expected to encounter after such an attack. The smell was closer to diesel or engine oil. She sniffed again, drawing it into her nostrils. ‘Like petrol,’ she muttered, and looked down at the dead man’s shoes. The edges of the soles were flecked with white paint. Cara bent down and removed one of them.

  ‘Hey, what are you doing?’ Jason asked.

  Cara sniffed the shoe, the engine oil much sharper now and cut with an odd, low tide smell of the sea. The flat soles were spotted with white paint and flecks of rust like tiny pieces of gold leaf.

  ‘He’s been on a boat,’ she said. ‘Look at this.’