Kite could not have been more shocked if Peele had told him that Xavier’s father was secretly working for BOX 88. Once again, Peele had to tell him to temper his reaction. Kite forced a smile onto his face but felt that he was grinding his teeth into a rictus.
‘I took a few photographs in Ali’s office yesterday. Letters. Documents. I was going to bring the roll of film to you this morning, but at the last minute Luc decided to join me on my run.’
Peele looked momentarily concerned. ‘He did? Why?’
Kite shrugged. ‘You saw my note? Forman and Berberian are mentioned in the correspondence.’
Peele nodded. They turned back towards the pétanque court.
‘We’re looking at the possibility that Eskandarian has been set up as a patsy. The more we look at Abbas, the more we see of Lockerbie. Too early to say, but your photographs will doubtless prove very useful.’ He put his arm across Kite’s back. ‘Whatever happens, we can step across the New York visit and shut down the threat to the subway. Well done.’
Kite absorbed the compliment, smiled naturally for the first time in several minutes, and sensed an opportunity to get some answers.
‘Why did you have to steal Martha’s photographs?’
Peele’s mask dropped.
‘Is that all you’re worried about?’
Kite felt his disappointment as a personal snub and reframed the question.
‘I’m just curious,’ he said. ‘What did she take that you needed? Pictures of Luc and Abbas?’
‘We didn’t steal the bag.’ Peele’s reply was emphatic. He nodded his head and grinned enthusiastically. It was like talking to a manic life-sized doll. ‘Bijan was on the bike that passed you last night. He wanted the photographs so that the exiles can find their way around the house when they come for Eskandarian.’
‘Can’t you stop them?’
‘It doesn’t work like that.’ Peele pointed into the distance, presumably to make it look as though they were discussing some aspect of the Provencal countryside. ‘BOX are not supposed to be here, remember?’
‘That’s ridiculous.’
Kite pictured a bloodbath at the villa in which Martha and Xavier would be collateral damage. It had to be stopped. Surely BOX 88 had the power to apprehend Abbas and Bijan?
‘Don’t worry,’ Peele reassured him. They were now twenty metres from the pool; when they turned around, Jacqui looked up to acknowledge them, pressing stop on the ghetto blaster after the first few bars of a Paul Young song she didn’t like. ‘The Frogs are taking this from us. You’ll all be protected.’
‘Are they going to arrest Abbas?’
‘Don’t worry about it. Your work is done. There’s nothing left for you to do. You can stand down and feel very, very proud of what you’ve achieved. We wouldn’t know half of this, and certainly wouldn’t be able to plan for it, had it not been for your contribution.’
Of all things at that moment, Kite thought about his A-level results, and the absurdity of everyone in the house celebrating the fact that he and Xavier had managed two As and a B. There had been chilled champagne and speeches at lunch. Peele had toasted ‘the boys’, describing them as ‘the best of Alford’ and joked that their ‘B’ grades would haunt them for the rest of their lives. How could he have been so calm, so blasé, knowing that at any moment there might be an attempt on Eskandarian’s life?
‘What are you planning?’ he asked.
‘Above your pay grade, I’m afraid,’ Peele replied. ‘Better that you don’t know.’
They were almost back at the pool. Kite stopped walking.
‘How did you know about Paul so quickly?’ he asked.
Peele laughed again and threw his head back, almost to the point that Kite thought he was overplaying it. ‘As you know, we’ve been working on Luc and Eskandarian for several months. Paul popped up in research a few weeks ago.’
‘So you’ve always been suspicious of Luc? You just decided not to tell me?’
‘Are you happy for your friend’s father to be selling chemical weapons to the government in Tehran? To be passing Ali Eskandarian into the hands of an exile group so that he can continue to make money while Iran reverts to the Stone Age?’
Kite didn’t know how to answer. All he was sure of was that Luc was corrupt. He wanted him to stop doing what he was doing so that Xavier could find faith in his father again. He didn’t want Luc going to prison or the Bonnard name dragged through the mud.
‘Xavier suspects that his dad is up to something,’ he said.
‘I’m not surprised.’ Peele sounded glib. ‘He’s been around his father. He’s probably picked up the scent of what’s going on.’
Kite was trying to imagine how Xavier could have worked out the nature of Luc’s arrangement with Eskandarian. Perhaps he didn’t know the details; perhaps he knew a lot more than he was letting on.
‘Have you passed on what you know about Luc to the French police?’ Jacqui had put a new album in the ghetto blaster. The music smothered Kite’s question. He felt suffocated, as though Peele and Strawson had taken advantage of his youth and inexperience to damage Luc. He could
