‘No,’ Kite replied. ‘Just used Xav’s.’
Luc put the Gameboy down. Kite had the feeling that he was pulling clear of danger. He had brazened things out. Perhaps Xavier’s father was starting to think that it was Abbas or Eskandarian who had planted the Gameboy. Then he walked over to his desk, opened a drawer and took out a screwdriver.
‘Let us take a look, shall we?’
Kite’s chest contracted. He thought of countless confrontations in the study of Lionel Jones-Lewis, his housemaster sadistically meting out yet another punishment to Kite for some minor infringement of the school rules. This was a different order of seriousness. If Luc opened the Gameboy, found the microphone and transmitter and showed them to Abbas or Eskandarian, he was finished.
‘You’re going to open it up?’ he asked, trying to sound bewildered. ‘Why?’
Luc ignored him. He tried to remove a screw in the casing. It was harder than he had anticipated. Xavier’s father was a corporate animal of the boardroom and airport lounge, not a handyman. When the screw failed to move, he tried to prise the plastic apart.
‘What are you worried about?’ Kite asked because it was essential to keep playing the innocent. A new tactic presented itself. ‘You don’t have to get it fixed for me!’ he said. ‘I can do it when I get back to London.’
‘Not for that,’ Luc replied contemptuously. ‘Not to get it fixed.’
Again Kite was forced to say: ‘Why then? What are you doing?’
‘You know what I’m doing, Lockie.’
Luc flashed Kite a pitiless stare, as if to say: I know who you are. I know that you have betrayed me. There was a sudden noise in the sitting room, a door banging shut. Kite prayed that nobody would come into the study. To be accused of planting a bug in front of Xavier or Martha would sow a suspicion which he would never shake off.
‘Merde!’ Luc swore as the screwdriver persistently slipped off the surface of the plastic. To Kite’s horror, he saw that Luc fully intended to smash the Gameboy on the side of the table. Just then, there was a knock on the door. Eskandarian walked in. When he saw Kite and Luc standing together, Luc’s face flushed with anger, he frowned.
‘What’s going on?’ he asked.
Kite knew that he was finished. The Gameboy would be opened up, the transmitter and microphone exposed. Yet to his astonishment, Luc set the device to one side, conjured an innocent, welcoming smile, and lied through his teeth.
‘Ali! Poor Lockie. His Gameboy isn’t working. We were just trying to fix it.’
At first Kite didn’t understand why Luc hadn’t come clean. Surely both men were vulnerable to the risk from surveillance? Then he put two and two together. By failing to uncover the Gameboy, Luc had exposed Eskandarian to risk. No matter that Luc was intending to cast his so-called friend aside in pursuit of greater profits; he had to continue to pretend that he had his best interests at heart.
‘Oh,’ said Eskandarian. It was obvious that he knew he was being palmed off. ‘Rosamund is looking for you. I think she wants to leave soon. Maybe I can take a look at the toy if you both want to change for the restaurant?’
‘No, it’s fine!’ Kite replied quickly. ‘It’s so kind of you to be taking us all out tonight.’
‘My pleasure, Lockie.’
‘Luc! Darling!’
Now Rosamund was calling to him from the hall. She walked into the study, bustling around like a hostess moments before the start of a party.
‘What are you three talking about?’ she said. ‘Aren’t you getting changed for dinner, darling? We have to leave in ten minutes.’
‘Ten minutes?’ Luc replied in a dazed manner. ‘Why so soon?’
‘The restaurant could only take all of us at seven,’ she replied. ‘Didn’t you listen? Come on!’ She looked briefly at the Gameboy in Luc’s hand. ‘You too, Lockie. This is no time to teach my husband Tetris. Wheels turning at half-past six.’
Luc waited until both his wife and Eskandarian had left the room.
‘We can discuss this later,’ he said.
‘Discuss what?’ Kite replied. ‘I still don’t understand.’
‘Yes, you do,’ Luc replied ominously. ‘You know exactly what I’m worried about.’
52
All the way to the restaurant Kite sat in the back seat of the BMW listening to Martha, Xavier and Jacqui casually chatting to Rosamund without a care in the world. For Kite, it was like driving towards a public hanging. He knew that it was only a matter of time before they returned to the villa and Luc confronted him with his treachery. He could picture the scene. All the major players would be standing in the hall: the Bonnards, Martha, Abbas, Alain and Hélène. Luc would be holding the doctored innards of the Nintendo, explaining to Eskandarian that the Gameboy had been transformed into a voice-activated microphone with a radio transmitter relaying conversations from the office to a listening post somewhere nearby. By then Abbas would have checked Kite’s bedroom, found the Walkman and brought it downstairs. Like some bit-part player in a country house murder mystery, Hélène would reveal to the assembled company that a lamp had been moved on the day of the Bonnards’ arrival. She had come across Monsieur Lockie acting suspiciously in the attic. Abbas would duly fetch the lamp and break it open. Kite would be finished.
He worked through his options. He could call Peele from the restaurant and get somebody to go to the villa, remove the microphone from the lamp and replace his Walkman with a copy. But how would BOX have the time and the wherewithal to do that, especially with Alain and Hélène lurking around? Kite already knew what Peele would say: ‘Stop worrying, Lockie. You’re overthinking things. If the shit hits the fan, your luggage was tampered with at some point between London and Charles de Gaulle. The Frogs took advantage of you. Nobody in their right mind would accuse you of being a spy.’ Kite tried to
