A creaking noise behind him. Abbas? Eskandarian? Kite didn’t want to risk being discovered so he walked to the downstairs bathroom, switched on the light, locked himself inside and searched the contents of the envelope.
There was a letter, written in Farsi on what appeared to be official government stationery. Two names were written in the text of the letter in English: ASEF BERBERIAN and DAVID FORMAN. With it, folded in half, was a return Air France airline ticket from Paris to New York JFK dated 22 August. The ticket was made out in the name ‘Abbas Karrubi’. Kite committed the names and the flight numbers to memory, then opened up a third document, a letter from the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Manhattan confirming that Abbas had a room reservation for a five-night stay in New York.
It felt like a smoking gun. Kite hurriedly put the documents back as he had found them, unlocked the door, switched off the light and returned the envelope to the left-hand hip pocket of Abbas’s jacket. By the time he got back to the terrace, Martha was wondering what had happened to him. Wordlessly she took his hand and they walked into the garden.
The first glow of the dawning sun was visible as a pale strip of light on the hills around Mougins. Kite was confused. The dates for the trip to New York coincided with a business conference Eskandarian was scheduled to attend in Lisbon. Was he planning to cancel his visit to Portugal so that Abbas could accompany him to the United States? Or was Abbas going solo, potentially meeting a contact in New York to discuss the subway attack? Martha suddenly stopped walking. They kissed beneath an olive tree. She tasted of cigarettes and wine. Kite wondered if it had been a mistake to brush his teeth.
‘What was that?’
A noise near the pool. Perhaps an animal of some kind. They stood stock-still, listening out. Kite heard the movement again.
‘Xav?’ he mouthed with a shrug.
He walked ahead of Martha, along the moonlit path, reaching the palm tree with the fallen fronds. There was a gap through the trees towards the poolhouse. Kite gestured at Martha not to make any sound.
Pressed up against the side of the hut, his trousers round his ankles, his naked, untanned buttocks glowing white in the moonlight, was Xavier. On her knees in front of him, only yards from where Kite and Martha had earlier been rolling on the grass, was Hana.
‘Jesus,’ Kite whispered and gestured at Martha to tiptoe backwards.
‘What?’ she said, heading back in the direction of the house.
‘It’s Xav and Hana,’ he told her when they were far enough away, barely able to believe what he had just seen and convinced that the less Martha knew, the better. ‘They’re getting off with each other by the pool.’
42
The man who walked into the house was in his early thirties. He was tall and physically fit, wearing a white shirt, dark trousers and black shoes. He moved with a pumped-up swagger. His most striking feature was his facial hair: a thick, carefully tended moustache and goatee, without sideburns, which gave him the appearance of a thug biker or religious zealot. Isobel was immediately afraid of him.
Two of the men guarding her went to the door to greet him. They spoke in hushed tones in Farsi. Isobel thought that she heard one of them calling the man ‘Hossein’. They were both subservient towards him. In due course the newcomer walked into the living room and stood in front of her.
‘You don’t look sick,’ he said in English.
‘Who are you?’ Isobel replied.
Hossein snapped a remark at Karim, admonishing him for what Isobel assumed was weakness or stupidity. Karim looked ashamed.
‘How pregnant are you?’ Hossein asked.
‘Five months. I need to go to hospital. I’m bleeding, it’s not—’
The man did not let her finish. He shouted at her: ‘You’re not bleeding!’ and looked at the others with contempt. ‘You fell for this act?’ he said in English. ‘She’s not in pain. She’s not bleeding. Why the fuck you stay here and not move her?’
None of the men answered. They were too cowed.
‘Your husband,’ Hossein continued, looking at Isobel. ‘He’s also making a lot of trouble for us. What is it with you two?’
Hope surged in Isobel at the mention of Lockie. He was alive. He was fighting back. She said: ‘Good. I’m glad he’s not giving in to you,’ and showed him a defiant smile. It was a mistake.
Hossein struck Isobel across the face with the back of his hand. She cried out. The pain was excruciating. Tears sprang to her eyes. She tried to blink them away before the men would notice them.
‘You are monsters,’ she said. Karim looked to the ground. The guard with the narrow chin turned and walked out of the room.
‘Maybe, maybe not,’ Hossein replied, before speaking again to Karim in Farsi. Isobel dabbed at the tears with a tissue while they were looking away. She was too frightened to risk more play-acting. Rambo kicked, as if to ask his mother what was happening. She almost burst into tears.
‘The last man to hit me was my father,’ she said. ‘That was the last time I ever saw him.’
It was meant as a statement of defiance, but Hossein did not react. There was a plate of chocolate biscuits on the table beside them. He leaned down and took one, sliding his eyes towards Isobel as he took a first bite. She noticed that the backs of both of his hands were bruised. She wondered if he had hit Lockie. There was a ring on his right hand. It must have been what had cut her face.
‘You have an hour left,’ he told her, chewing the biscuit.
‘Excuse me?’
‘One hour.’
‘I don’t understand. An hour for what?’
‘If your husband doesn’t give my boss the answers he wants, I have orders to kill you. So make
