It sounded easy. Kite said that he was looking forward to it. Peele consulted the yellow pad.
‘Did you have the sense that Bijan knew where Eskandarian was staying?’
‘None. And I kept looking behind our taxi on the way home for a tail, but there was nobody there.’
‘Good. Well done.’ He tapped the pen on the lined yellow paper and conjured a further plan. ‘After you’ve spoken to Ali, go into Mougins, use the phone box at the supermarket and call Bijan. We’ve got it covered, we’ll see you going in. Tell him you want to meet up. Make him feel like you’re on his side, that you can’t stop thinking about what he told you in Cannes, that you want to help broker a meeting with Eskandarian.’
Kite recalled his promise to take Martha into Mougins after breakfast on the back of the Vespa. He couldn’t tell Peele that, but it would look suspicious if he made two trips in one day.
‘Where would a meeting take place?’ he asked.
‘Get him to suggest somewhere. He won’t want to come to the house, he might give you an address in Mougins or back in Cannes. With any luck, it’ll be his apartment or somewhere used by opposition groups. Write down the address in case there’s a problem with the line and the Falcons don’t catch it. If he says he needs more time, tell him you’ll try to call back later. If he asks for the number at the house, tell him you don’t know it. If he asks why you’re calling from a phone box, tell him you didn’t want anyone listening in. OK?’
It sounded straightforward. Kite shrugged and said: ‘Sure.’
‘Good man.’ Peele set the pad on the table and stood up. ‘Come and have a quick look at something.’
He showed Kite upstairs. The largest of four bedrooms had been turned into a listening post. Carl was seated at a desk with a pair of headphones clamped to his ears. There was a two-reel tape recorder in front of him, a word processor and a car phone resting on a charging block. A cigarette was burning in a Michelin ashtray next to a half-eaten bowl of cereal. The milk had already started to separate in the heat. Carl took off the headphones, looped them round his neck and said: ‘Hey, Lockie. Good work. Getting lots out of the lamp.’
‘Do you think if Hana rubs it, she’ll be granted three wishes?’ Peele asked.
‘Master Aladdin,’ said Carl, putting on a Vietnamese accent. ‘Stop my boyfriend snoring. Send me Chanel handbag and diamond necklace so I go back home to Nice.’
‘Is she a prostitute?’ Kite asked. The question sounded more prurient than he had intended.
‘That’s what we’re keen to find out,’ Peele replied. ‘We still don’t know where she came from or how he found her. Hasn’t made a phone call since she arrived. Doesn’t seem to know Ali very well and is astonishingly incurious about his life and times. We wondered if she was DGSI, but the behaviour doesn’t fit.’
It hadn’t even occurred to Kite that Hana might have been planted by French intelligence. This was the moment to tell them about the pool hut; surely no French spy would do what she had done. Yet Kite couldn’t bring himself to betray Xavier’s trust.
‘Let me see if I can get her passport details,’ he said, scrabbling around for an answer. ‘I’ve kept trying but no dice. She doesn’t act weirdly. There’s nothing suspicious about her except for the fact that she’s sleeping with a man twice her age.’
‘We should all be so lucky,’ Carl muttered. A bird started singing in the garden. ‘What is that fucking noise?’ he said. ‘Never stops, day and night, on and on and on.’ He did an impression of the sound. ‘Is it a cuckoo? Some sort of French tit?’
‘Wood pigeon,’ Peele replied decisively.
Kite was looking behind the door of the bedroom. Several black-and-white surveillance photos had been laid out on a small table.
‘Who took these?’ he said, picking them up.
The first showed Eskandarian getting out of the Audi in Cannes. The second was a shot of Abbas sitting in his suit on the beach. Others were random long lens shots of Luc, Rosamund, Eskandarian and Abbas in various locations, including Mougins and the gardens of the villa. There were two blurred images of Martha, several of Xavier talking to Eskandarian by the pool. Kite realised that it was possible to see almost every corner of the swimming area, including the hut, from at least two vantage points in the hills.
‘Just for background,’ Carl explained.
‘Big Brother is watching you,’ Peele added, giving Kite a nudge.
Kite didn’t know how to respond. Naively, he hadn’t realised that the house would be under such tight surveillance.
‘Talking of pictures,’ Peele continued. ‘Is Martha still snapping away?’
‘All the time,’ Kite replied. ‘Why?’
‘Just good to have a third eye.’
Before Kite had a chance to ask Peele what he meant by that, Carl looked up at a clock on the wall and said: ‘Guys, keep an eye on the time. If Lockie’s on a run, he should be going by now.’
‘Good point.’ Peele put his hand on Kite’s back. ‘The fragrant Abbas will be waiting.’
‘I counted them all out and I counted them all back,’ Carl declared, typing something into the computer keyboard. Kite didn’t know what he was talking about. It was as if the two men had developed their own
