Kite fastened his belt. Blades of grass were still stuck to his knees and the back of his shirt. The ghetto blaster was inside the swimming hut and he went to fetch it. When he came back, Martha kissed him again, grabbing the back of his head and pulling him towards her. He couldn’t put his right arm around her because he was carrying the stereo and had to lower it carefully to the ground, aware of the fragile technology inside, so that he could kiss her properly.
‘OK, enough,’ she said after a minute. She touched her lips and smiled at him. ‘You’re such a good kisser, Lockie. Jesus.’
‘You too,’ he said.
‘How do I look? I feel like a complete mess.’
‘Fucking amazing,’ he said.
Xavier and Eskandarian were indeed playing backgammon, their low conversation, the rattle of the dice and the soft wooden tap of the checkers audible as they made their way back through the garden. Kite was in a state of dizzied euphoria, completely smitten by Martha, elated finally to have been with her and pleased not to have messed it up. As they emerged onto the terrace, he triumphantly raised Strawson’s ghetto blaster above his head, like Perseus with the head of Medusa.
‘Music!’ said Hana, coming outside with a cafetière of black coffee and some small blue cups on a tray. ‘At last!’
‘Where the fuck have you two been?’ Xavier asked drunkenly. ‘Or shouldn’t I ask?’
‘Lockie was showing me how the pool filter worked,’ Martha replied. ‘It was really interesting.’
Eskandarian smiled and stood up, stretching his arms above his head and letting out a deep, satisfied sigh. He knew exactly what had been going on and even slipped Kite a little sideways look of congratulation. Kite thought of Bijan, of all the women in Iran denied make-up and lipstick and lovers outside of marriage. If he and Martha had been caught doing what they had just done in a Tehran public park, would Martha have been whipped and Kite’s dead body hung from a crane? Surely not. He snapped out of it and poured both of them a drink. Half of the Johnnie Walker had already been consumed and there was now a bottle of red wine on the table. Kite plugged in the stereo, positioned it so that the speakers were facing Eskandarian’s chair, and pressed play on the tape deck. Strawson had promised that the Turings would have the ability to strip out any music on the surveillance tapes so that the recorded conversations remained intact, but as soon as Bob Marley started singing ‘Is This Love?’ Kite wondered how the hell they’d be able to hear anything at all.
‘Who’s winning at backgammon?’ he asked.
‘Who do you think?’ Eskandarian replied. ‘You have no faith in me?’
‘Lucky dice,’ said Xavier. ‘He’s just had lucky dice.’
Eskandarian was smoking a Cuban cigar. Hana was standing behind him, massaging his shoulders. She had changed out of her miniskirt and was wearing a sari which reminded Kite of adverts for Cathay Pacific featuring impossibly beautiful Asian stewardesses serving glasses of champagne in first class. It was very obvious that she was looking down at Xavier and trying to catch his eye. Kite began to worry. Drunk as they both were, surely Hana wouldn’t cheat on Eskandarian and risk a fling with her hosts’ eighteen-year-old son? Surely she was just an Olympic tease playing with the feelings of a boy who very obviously lusted after her? Maybe Eskandarian was in on the joke and they laughed about Xavier every night when they went to bed. Martha poured the coffee, then went inside to change. Kite offered to take on the winner of the next backgammon game and found himself playing – and losing – to Eskandarian, despite practising against Peele night after night in Hampstead.
‘You’re right,’ he said to Xavier. ‘He gets lucky dice.’
They stayed on the terrace for another hour, finishing the coffee, the wine and the whisky and trying out one of Eskandarian’s cigars. Kite had never smoked one before; he told Ali that he liked the smell but not the taste. He judged that nothing Eskandarian said would be of any consequence to BOX 88, though perhaps his relaxed attitude to western music, his habit of enjoying the company of people half his age, as well as his heroic consumption of alcohol would help them to form a more detailed picture of his character. At four-thirty, the Iranian announced that he was going to bed and bade everyone goodnight. Hana said that she would be up soon, after helping to clear the terrace. Ten minutes later, she failed to come back to say goodnight after ferrying a tray of glasses and coffee cups to the kitchen. Xavier lit a final cigarette and said he was going for a wander in the garden, leaving Martha and Kite alone.
‘Let’s go back to the pool,’ she said. ‘I want you again.’
‘Give me five minutes,’ Kite replied, amazed that he was going to be given another opportunity so soon to relive the bliss of their earlier encounter. ‘Just going inside.’
He went upstairs, brushed his teeth and put on a fresh T-shirt. The lights in the attic were all out. The door to Abbas’s room was closed. Kite could hear the sound of the bodyguard snoring. He tiptoed down to the ground floor, where he and Xavier had hung their jackets after getting back from the club. Kite walked across the hall to fetch them, only to find that Abbas had also left his jacket hanging next to Xavier’s. Kite knew that he should search it; if he was caught, it would be simple to claim that he was looking for cigarettes.
Without removing it from the hook, he reached into the inside pockets of the jacket. They were empty. The material was heavy and smelled strongly of tobacco. Kite patted the sides of the jacket. There was a document of some kind in the
