Luc was alone with Eskandarian in the Mercedes. The two men had said that they needed to talk. Rosamund had encouraged this, saying: ‘Yes, you two kiss and make up after last night.’ Kite suspected that Luc was going to tell Eskandarian about a possible intrusion in his office. Abbas had driven ahead to the restaurant, ostensibly to check security. Kite hoped to God there was a plain-clothes team of BOX 88 Closers in Vence who would protect Eskandarian, Martha and the rest of the group from any attack, if and when it came.
Their table, inevitably, was outside, at the edge of a busy square in the centre of Vence. Both Luc and Eskandarian emerged from the Mercedes in an upbeat mood, which Kite took as a small sign of encouragement. Abbas took up his post at a neighbouring table, smoking a cigarette and drinking a glass of water, without seeming to be unusually nervous or agitated. Nevertheless, when the time came for Eskandarian to seat his guests, Kite held Martha back so that she would not be next to Eskandarian during the meal. Instead, that honour fell to Kite himself, and to Rosamund, who was seated to the right of the Iranian.
It was a typically warm August evening. Several families with young children were eating dinner at the outdoor tables, but it was still early enough for many of the locals and tourists still to be enjoying aperitifs and cups of coffee as the sun went down. Directly behind Eskandarian, a toddler in a high chair was having baby food spooned into his mouth by an exhausted mother with a Scottish accent. The toddler’s slightly older brother was throwing pizza crusts onto the ground and screaming in frustration, much to his father’s annoyance.
‘I don’t know why we didn’t just feed them at the house,’ he hissed as another chunk of ham landed on the square.
‘Because I’m sick of cooking and cleaning up,’ his wife replied, on the verge of tears. Kite wondered if a spoonful of baby food would soon flick onto the back of Eskandarian’s shirt or plop into Rosamund’s Kir. The thought made him feel slightly more relaxed and he tried to distract himself, concentrating on the back-and-forth chat at the table and occasionally joining in whenever he could think of something constructive to add to the conversation.
The attack, when it came, happened so fast that Kite was not fully aware of the threat when the van pulled up on the road and stopped in front of the table. For the first few seconds it felt as though a vehicle supplying food to the restaurant had perhaps gone to the wrong entrance or that the van was stopping only momentarily so that it could be loaded with flowers from a nearby stall. Looking back, Kite unconsciously took his cue from Abbas, who did not move from his seat as the van applied its brakes, emitting a burst of thick black exhaust fumes. Rosamund coughed and waved a hand in front of her face saying: ‘Goodness, is that really necessary when we’re all trying to eat?’ Then the meal and the beautiful summer evening and the easy talk at the table came to an end.
The back doors of the van burst open and a man in a red balaclava jumped down. He was holding a handgun. Simultaneously a second armed man, his face concealed by a black bandana, leaped down from the passenger seat and moved quickly towards the tables. Later, giving statements to the French police, both Kite and Martha would tell them that the man in the black bandana deliberately targeted Abbas, not Eskandarian, so as to remove the possibility that he could prevent the attack. Before Eskandarian’s bodyguard had so much as moved from his seat, the man had fired two shots at his chest from a distance of no more than three metres. In the ensuing panic, Kite instinctively moved to protect Martha, who had gone to Abbas to try to help him. At the same time the man in the red balaclava seized the back of Eskandarian’s head, drove it forward twice onto the hard table, then dragged him, with the assistance of a third man, into the back of the van.
Seeing what was happening, Kite did what he could to prevent Eskandarian from being taken. Rushing towards the man in the red balaclava, he wrapped his arms around his waist, only to receive an elbow in the face which hit him with such force that he was knocked backwards onto the table, bringing plates and glasses and cutlery crashing down around him. Eskandarian himself was kicking out and shouting in Farsi, but the men easily overpowered him, and he was bundled into the vehicle.
Kite was on the ground trying to make a mental note of the number plate when he heard the gunshot. With Eskandarian safely inside the van, the man in the red balaclava had closed one of the rear doors and was trying to shut the other. With what life remained to him, Abbas fired and hit him in the chest as he was closing the second door. Somebody inside shouted a word Kite assumed meant ‘Go!’ in Farsi and the driver accelerated away, the rear door slamming shut as the van moved off. A moped, parked on the edge of the square, was knocked to one side and the flower stall smashed as the vehicle made its getaway. Within less than a minute, the men had come and gone, taking Eskandarian with them.
53
‘Why
