BOX 88
Charles Cumming
Copyright
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2020
Copyright © Charles Cumming 2020
Cover design by Stephen Mulcahey © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2020
Cover photographs © Marina Endermar/Dreamstime.com (church), CollaborationJS/Arcangel Images (man)
Charles Cumming asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780008200367
Ebook Edition © October 2020 ISBN: 9780008200381
Version: 2020-08-19
Dedication
for Harriette
Epigraph
‘We have as many personalities as
we have friends’
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Index of Characters
21 December 1988
London, the present day
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Keep Reading …
Acknowledgements
About the Author
By Charles Cumming
About the Publisher
Index of Characters
The Kite family:
Lachlan Kite (‘Lockie’), intelligence officer
Isobel Paulsen, Lachlan’s Swedish-American wife, a doctor
Cheryl Kite (née Chapman), Lachlan’s mother
Patrick Kite (‘Paddy’), Lachlan’s father (d.1982)
The Bonnard family:
Xavier Bonnard, Kite’s childhood friend
Luc Bonnard, Xavier’s father
Rosamund Bonnard (née Penley), Xavier’s mother
Jacqueline Ward (‘Jacqui’), Xavier’s younger sister
BOX 88:
Michael Strawson, veteran CIA officer and co-founder of BOX 88
Rita Ayinde, senior officer (UK)
Jason Franks, head of Black Ops (a ‘Closer’)
Carl Fowler, surveillance officer (a ‘Falcon’)
Freddie Lane, computer analyst (a ‘Turing’)
Ward Hansell, senior officer (US)
James (‘Jock’) and Eleanor (‘Miss Ellie’) Carpmael, office managers at ‘The Cathedral’
The Reverend Anthony Childs, a vicar
Alford College:
Lionel Jones-Lewis, Kite’s housemaster, known by the initials ‘LJL’
Cosmo de Paul, joined Alford in the same year as Kite
William ‘Billy’ Peele, history teacher
The Security Service (MI5):
Robert Vosse, leader of MI5 investigation into BOX 88
Cara Jannaway, intelligence officer
Matt Tomkins, intelligence officer
Other Characters:
Ali Eskandarian, an Iranian
Abbas Karrubi, bodyguard to Ali Eskandarian
Hana Dufour, a friend of Ali Eskandarian
Ramin Torabi, an Iranian businessman
Martha Raine, a schoolfriend of Jacqueline Ward
Zoltan Pavkov, a Serb
Bijan Vaziri, an Iranian exile
21 December 1988
They were just another American family heading home for the holidays.
A taxi had been booked to take them from their house in Pimlico, little Gaby facing backwards on the fold-down chair, her legs not yet long enough to reach the floor, every inch of the cab crammed with suitcases and boxes and Harrod’s carrier bags full of presents wrapped for Christmas. Mommy and Daddy were facing her, side by side on the back seat, her giant Hamleys’ teddy bear wedged between them. Whenever the driver braked, Gaby could feel herself pulled backwards and then forwards, weightless for an instant, like the feeling of being on the swings in Battersea Park and wanting to fly off into the afternoon sky. Her mother said: ‘Careful, sweetie,’ but there was no way she was going to fall, not with the suitcases to steady her and the handle on the door to hold onto. She loved the growl of the taxi’s engine, the Christmas lights receding in the back window, her father’s voice as he pointed out the Italian restaurant they had been to for Grandpa’s birthday, then the home of the Martins in Chelsea, the other American family they knew in London with their golden retriever, Montana, who licked Gaby’s face whenever she gave him a hug.
Mommy had told her that there were only three more bedtimes until Christmas Eve. One tonight, on the aeroplane which was taking them across the ocean to New York, then two in her bedroom at the house in Stamford. Gaby felt giddy with excitement. She would miss her friends from school – Claire and JenJen, Billy and Pi – but they had promised to stay in touch and write postcards to one another from wherever they were going.
Soon the taxi started going faster and they were on the freeway heading out to Heathrow. At the airport, the driver found a trolley. Gaby watched her parents pile the suitcases one on top of the other until Daddy insisted Mommy fetch a second trolley to cope with all the bags. He had given the driver thirty pounds saying: ‘Keep the change.’ The driver’s name was Barry. When he asked where they were going, Gaby told him: ‘New York. Pan Am flight number 103. Have you ever been to New York?’
‘’Fraid not,’ Barry replied. ‘You have a safe trip, sweetheart, lovely Christmas.’
There was a tree with tinsel but no lights near the desk where they queued with the trolleys. Afterwards Gaby showed her passport to a man wearing a turban who wished her a happy Christmas. She had to walk through a special door that detected metal while her rucksack and teddy bear went through the X-ray machine. A boy beside her was crying. Gaby couldn’t understand why someone would be crying when there were only three more bedtimes until Christmas.
Eventually, after Mommy had taken her to the bathroom and bought some earplugs in a pharmacy inside the terminal, they walked down a long corridor to a big room where the other passengers were waiting to board the aeroplane. Gaby heard American accents, lots of them, saw older children listening to music on Walkmans, a woman lying asleep, sprawled
