They walked down a flight of stone steps into what Kite assumed was the crypt. The walls were constructed of grey breeze-blocks. There was no carpeting on the floor.
‘This way please,’ he said, walking towards a third locked door. The vicar knocked three times in quick succession, paused for a moment, then three times again. Kite now wondered if he was the object of an elaborate practical joke.
The sound of a bolt being drawn back. Kite waited as the heavy steel door was opened by someone on the other side.
‘You’ll be looked after from here,’ said Childs as a man of at least sixty wearing denim jeans, a collared shirt and tweed jacket appeared on the other side of the door, nodded at Kite and said: ‘Welcome.’
Like Janki before him, the vicar turned swiftly around and walked back in the direction from which he had come. Kite was lost for words. He simply said: ‘Bye then.’
‘This way, son,’ said the man. He had an Arthur Daley accent and a twinkle in his eye. ‘I’m Jock. Look after the place with my wife. They call her Miss Ellie, like the Ewings. Gettit? Only a short walk from here.’
‘Jock’ was the nickname Kite had been given in his first days at Alford. He wondered what ties this cheerful, sixty-something Cockney had to Scotland. They were now standing at one end of a long, underground bunker, presumably a relic of the war. The area was dimly lit but again neither cold nor damp. Kite was so bewildered by what was happening that he struggled even to respond to Jock’s greeting.
‘All this must be very unusual for you,’ he said, sensing Kite’s confusion. ‘Did the Reverend explain? We don’t always come in this way. Just on special occasions, star guests. Anthony as gatekeeper.’
They reached the far end of the bunker. Jock unlocked another steel door and Kite was shown into a well-lit, furnished foyer in what was presumably the basement of a building on the opposite side of the square to the church. Two men in suits were waiting for him. They did not introduce themselves, they were neither of them particularly welcoming nor cheerful. To break the tension, Kite said: ‘Doctor Livingstone, I presume,’ but he had misjudged the moment; they looked at their shoes. He stepped into a lift with the three men and stood in the corner, his face flushed with embarrassment, wondering why Peele or Strawson had not come to meet him. When the doors eventually opened, he was invited to make his way along another long passage in what was evidently a modern multi-storey office block. Each of the rooms on either side of the passage was a large glass-fronted office with slatted blinds. There was a smell of instant coffee and cigarette smoke. Kite could hear the ringing of telephones and the chatter of a Telex. In one of the offices he glimpsed a map of the Middle East; in another, people were standing up and watching CNN on a colour television. By the time he had reached the door, Jock and the younger of the two men were no longer with him.
The older man knocked and walked straight into the room without waiting for an answer.
‘He’s here,’ he announced.
Seated in a chair by the window, looking out through a partially open Venetian blind, was Michael Strawson. Kite had expected as much. He felt that he was always walking into strange rooms in which the American was waiting for him.
‘Lockie,’ he said. He looked tired and distracted, as if Kite’s arrival had shaken him from deep contemplation. ‘How was your flight?’
‘Fine, thanks. Good to be here.’
‘So you met Sebastian?’
Kite was keen to claw back some of the face he had lost in the lift and said: ‘No. Actually, he didn’t introduce himself.’
Strawson seemed surprised by this and cut the man a look.
‘Oh. This is Sebastian Maidstone, my number two here in London. Sebastian began life in SIS, he’s across what’s been going on in France.’
‘What’s happened to Luc?’ Kite asked him. He was shaking Maidstone’s hand and had the sense of a controlling, calculating man who did not approve of him.
‘I’ll let Michael discuss that,’ Maidstone replied. He forced a smile onto his face which managed to be both inauthentic and powerfully condescending.
‘Give us five minutes, will you?’ Strawson told him.
Kite was relieved to see Maidstone leave the room. He had reminded him of a particularly starchy beak at Alford who had several times taken pleasure in sending Kite to see the headmaster for some minor infraction of the school rules. Strawson went back to his chair and invited Kite to sit with him by the window. In his eyeline, Kite could see the same framed photograph of Strawson’s wife which had been beside his bed at Killantringan. There was a word processor on his desk, two telephones and several in-trays filled with paperwork.
‘To answer your question. Luc has been taken into custody by the French police. You want something to drink?’
‘Nothing, thank you,’ Kite replied, confused by Strawson’s matter-of-fact tone.
‘I want you to know that it was never the objective of this organisation to gather intelligence on Xavier’s father with the purpose of bringing him to trial. Anomalies arose in connection with his relationship to Eskandarian which we were powerless to ignore.’
If Peele had said such a thing, Kite would have challenged it. With Strawson, he always felt that it was unwise to argue. What was done was done. Strawson could be lying to him; Strawson could be telling the truth. Either way, someone as junior as Kite was never going to be allowed to get to the bottom of it.
‘OK,’ he said. ‘What have they charged him with?’
He thought of Xavier at the villa, alone with his mother and sister, the family cracked open.
‘Breaching the Iranian sanctions. Supplying illegal dual-use materials to the regime in Tehran. They’re also looking at the possibility Luc was facilitating the production of chemical weapons.’
‘With Ali’s help?’
Strawson’s mouth puckered. ‘No. I don’t know if Billy …’ He hesitated, seemingly choosing his words carefully. ‘If Billy told you, but that was one of the issues on which Luc and Ali disagreed. We captured at least one conversation between Luc and Abbas in which they discussed finding a new Iranian government source for the nerve agents.’
Kite was poleaxed. He said: ‘Billy mentioned that you were suspicious of Luc’s relationship with Abbas. You suspected he was going behind Ali’s back.’
‘Certainly seems that way.’ Strawson looked out through the slats of the Venetian blind.
‘Where am I?’ Kite asked. The slats were open, but he could not see the square nor the steeple of the church in which the vicar had been waiting for him.
‘Well, as you know by now, we call this The Cathedral,’ Strawson replied. ‘Largest of three buildings in London owned and controlled by us, in effect BOX 88 operational headquarters in the UK.’ There was still something oddly flat about his mood. Kite had expected greater enthusiasm, more of Strawson’s characteristic ebullience. He put it down to the American’s disappointment over Eskandarian. ‘Jock brought you in via the church, where Anthony is pastor. Used to be one of us and, as you can see, he continues to help out from time to time.’ Strawson parted two of the slats in the blind and pointed downwards. ‘We’re in what appears to the outside world to be a residential and commercial compound consisting of houses, this office block and a small recreational area. Several of the staff live here full time in order to give an appearance of ordinary day-to-day activity to whoever might be passing by or giving too much thought to what goes on behind the gates.’
‘The gates,’ said Kite.
‘There are standard In-Out security lanes on the square for vehicles, another to the east, also access via the air-raid shelter you passed through just now. The office itself – this building we are in – faces out onto a residential street.’ Strawson pointed around the corner to a spot Kite could not see. ‘You’ll see a list of shell companies on the wall as you walk in, travel bureaus, advertising agencies, that kind of thing. All of it designed to give the impression of nothing much in particular going on. Ever
ybody who works here is known to security. You show a face, you show a pass, you get in.’
Perhaps it didn’t interest Strawson to talk about The Cathedral in this way, but Kite had the strong sense that he was distracted by something and wanted to move on. Clearly he had been admitted to the inner sanctum to discuss what had happened in Vence. As an eyewitness, Kite’s testimony would be vital.
‘Look, kid …’ Strawson turned to face him. He took hold of Kite’s arm. There was suddenly an awful, avuncular softness both to his words and to this simple gesture which filled Kite with dread. ‘I have to tell you something. It’s not good. It’s not good at all.’
Nothing could have prepared Kite for this moment. He somehow knew what Strawson was going to tell him before he said it.
‘We lost Billy last night. He was shot in the van. He was killed.’
It was as if Kite had been overcome by a fever, the building beneath him falling away, the floor and the walls slipping to earth and a young man emptied of all that was hopeful and good in him.
‘What?’ he managed to say. ‘How?’
‘It was us in Vence, kid. We had to get Eskandarian. We have him now. The shot that was fired, the man that was hit in the van, that was Billy. Your friend and mine.’
Through his consternation, Kite replayed the moment in his mind like a sickening home video. He remembered rushing towards the man in the red balaclava, trying to stop him hurting Eskandarian. It had been Peele’s elbow that had sent him backwards onto the table, bringing plates and glasses crashing down all around him. He could still feel the pain in his jaw where his friend had struck him. Why hadn’t he told him they were going to be in the van, that this was what BOX had planned all along?
Kite was numb with shock. He did not want to show weakness to Strawson, did not want to fail in front of him, but he lost the strength in his legs and slumped back into a chair. Strawson steadied him, saying: ‘I’m so sorry, Lockie. Really, I’m so sorry.’ The dreadful thought occurred to Kite: If I hadn’t interfered, would Peele still be alive? By grabbing him, by trying to be the hero, had he delayed his escape by the few seconds it took Abbas to summon the last of his energy and fire the fatal shot? Kite found that he was hardly able to breathe. Tears welled in his eyes. He did not want Strawson to see him crying and looked away. He remembered the bullet hitting Peele in the chest, the flower stall burst apart by the van. It was his fault. His failure.
‘We’re all devastated, as you can imagine,’ said Strawson.
Kite could not believe that anybody in that strange, secret building was as devastated as he was. Nobody had known Billy Peele in the way that he did. Nobody had believed in Lachlan Kite in the way that Billy Peele had believed in him. Everything that had happened in France had only happened because of this man who had trusted him, taught him, taken him under his wing. That man was now lying dead, somewhere in France, somewhere in London, with a bullet in his heart.
‘Where is he?’ he asked. He was extraordinarily cold. ‘Is he here? Did you bring him back? Can I see him?’
Kite began to sob uncontrollably. It was the first time that he had cried since his father’s funeral. He was ashamed of himself but completely powerless to stop it. Strawson, to his amazement, crouched down and held him, whispering: ‘I’m so sorry, kid. It’s OK. Let it out. I’m so sorry.’ Kite had the wild, awful thought that Sebastian Maidstone was going to walk in and laugh at them. Strawson produced a pale blue handkerchief from his pocket which Kite used to mop his tears. It smelled of the same cologne Luc had worn in France. ‘We haven’t lost a man in five years. It’s just one of those things.’
‘One of those things?’ Kite repeated, sitting up and looking at Strawson. He could feel that his tears were stopping, as if the initial shock of hearing that Peele was dead had been expelled from him. ‘What were you doing in the van? What happened to Ali? I don’t understand.’
‘When you’re ready, I can tell you. I’ll explain everything, OK?’
Kite nodded mutely. The American touched his face as he might have touched the face of his own son.
‘It will take time. Everything is going to be all right. I’m going to take care of you. We all will. We’re going to make sure that you never have to go through anything like this again. You’re one of us now, Lockie. Part of the family.’
58
‘How is it possible that my father is still alive?’ Torabi asked.
Kite could see that he believed him. The Iranian had read enough files and spoken to enough people to have doubted the official version of the kidnapping; they had fed his obsession. He continued to point the gun at Kite’s chest, but appeared to be deep in thought. Perhaps he was allowing himself a moment of quiet celebration. He started nodding his head in a kind of warped daze, like someone listening to music through headphones, losing themselves to the beat.
‘It’s possible because you were right about the Americans. It was CIA in the van, not the exiles. The CIA shot Abbas and kidnapped your father. Bijan and his comrades were assassinated on the orders of MI6. They both wanted Eskandarian for themselves.’ Kite was as close to the truth as he would ever go; it was unthinkable that he would tell Torabi about Peele or BOX 88. ‘He lived in Maryland under witness protection for the next fifteen years. Since then he’s been resident here in the UK.’
‘How do you know this?’
Never confess, never break cover, never admit to being a spy.
‘I know this because I am who you thought I was. I’m not an oil trader. I work for British intelligence. I can take you to your father if you call off Hossein.’
There was no discernible reaction to Kite’s revelation: no shock that Eskandarian had resided in the United States, nor any visible acknowledgement that Kite had at last confessed the truth. Torabi said only: ‘Explain it to me.’
‘There isn’t time.’
‘My father was a traitor?’
‘Your father was a hero. He was seized because the Americans made a calculation that he would be more useful to them in Washington than he would have been in Tehran. He did more to heal the divisions between Iran and the West than a thousand diplomats, a thousand politicians. There’s a reason we were able to do business with Rafsanjani and Khatami in the nineties. That reason was your father.’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Torabi, too astonished fully to acknowledge what Kite had told him.
‘Your father believed that the Iran which had been promised to the children of the Revolution was not the Iran which has materialised. He wanted to do something about that, to bring your country in from the cold. After 9/11, there was less any of us could do. We went into Iraq, Ahmedinajad came along, Netanyahu, and the whole mess started up again. But Ali played a pivotal role in the long negotiations which led to the nuclear deal.’
Kite paused, knowing that he had left out the salient fact that Eskandarian had died in his bed in 2014. He had not lived long enough to see the deal on which he had worked so hard signed into law, nor to watch it being pulled apart two years later by the Trump administration. By an extraordinary twist of fate, Luc Bonnard had passed away on the same day at a hospital in Paris, nine years after his release from prison.
‘And Lockerbie?’ Torabi asked.
‘What about it?’ Kite calculated that there would be no harm in telling his captor a little more of the truth. ‘Abbas Karrubi was the channel to the PFLP, not Ali. We got our wires crossed. The regime in Tehran was using Abbas as the linkman to Jibril and al-Megrahi. They set your father up as a patsy. Before the end of the month, the FBI had arrested four members of an Iranian terrorist cell in New York, all of whom were shown in court to have had links to Abbas Karrubi. One of them was called Asef Berberian. The other was using a pseudonym: David Forman. They would have killed hundreds on the subway using sarin gas, a terrorist nightmare in Manhattan more than a decade in advance of 9/11. You must have read about that at MOIS?’
Torabi ignored the question. He was still pointing the gun at Kite
, although his forearm was now shaking very slightly. Kite knew that his best chance was still to get both of them off the ship. It was too risky to try to overpower him.
‘We should move if you want to see your father,’ he said. ‘Somebody will have heard the gunshots. The police will be here at any moment. I’ll be dead, you’ll be arrested, and you’ll never get what you want. No answers, no contact.’
‘Maybe,’ Torabi replied.
‘I’m offering you a trade. My wife’s life and the life of my child for your freedom and a chance to see your father again.’
To Kite’s surprise, Torabi lowered the gun. ‘You know where he lives?’ he asked. ‘You know his address?’
‘I went to see him eight months ago. He lives in Marble Arch. That’s all I’m going to tell you.’ Torabi was never going to get the closure he craved. Kite’s lies would see to that. ‘No address, no details,’ he said. ‘We go together or we don’t go at all.’
‘How can I trust you? As soon as we step through the door, I will be arrested.’
‘Not if I tell them to leave you alone. Not if you contact Hossein and call off your dogs. I have that power. You know I do.’
Torabi beckoned Kite to his feet. He looked like a pharaoh bestowing forgiveness on an errant subject. As he stood up, Kite had a sudden flash memory of the bullet hitting Billy Peele in the chest. He saw the flower stall burst open, heard the children crying in the square. He briefly closed his eyes, remembering the long sickness of his grief.
‘Do we have a deal?’ he asked.
Box 88 : A Novel (2020) Page 43