Kite had said nothing to Torabi about Peele’s visit to the house or Abbas’s betrayal of Eskandarian.
‘I suppose they wanted to get rid of him because he was a threat. He had met Bijan, he had seen his face. Why let him live? The exile group wanted him out of the picture. They needed to sever the link so that Eskandarian wouldn’t be found.’
‘But Bijan was found dead only a day later. He and all his associates, killed when the French police stormed their apartment in Cannes.’
‘I know,’ Kite replied.
‘But they didn’t find my father.’
Kite shrugged. ‘No, they didn’t,’ he said, concerned that Torabi’s line of questioning suggested he knew more than he was letting on. ‘I always assumed Ali was killed that night, at the very latest the next morning.’
‘Why did they not shoot him in the restaurant?’
‘You’re asking the wrong man!’ Kite replied. ‘I have no idea. The Americans I spoke to after the attack said that it was possible they intended to ransom him, to put his face on television as a way of bringing the world’s attention to what was happening in Iran. That he was being held at an unknown location when Bijan and his comrades were killed. Once that happened, the exiles cut their losses and murdered your father.’
Torabi nodded, as if this was a more plausible version of events. Kite had lost the feeling in his left arm and asked if Kamran, who was standing by the door, would release his hands so that he could move around and stretch. The request was ignored.
‘You saw the three men in bandanas and balaclavas?’
‘Of course. I tried to restrain one of them.’
‘Yes. Xavier told me that. He told me you were very brave.’
Kite did not know how to respond. He felt that Xavier had betrayed him by speaking to Torabi, endangering Isobel’s life in doing so. Yet he could not blame his friend for his anger and confusion. He was glad, at least, that Xavier had verified his account of the kidnapping. He had never known the full truth.
‘Did you recognise Bijan?’
Kite lied and said: ‘Yes, a part of me thought that the man who shot Abbas looked a bit like Bijan. The way he moved, his size, that sort of thing.’
‘But he was not the man in the red balaclava. The one who was shot as the van was leaving?’
‘No, not him,’ Kite replied.
‘Who was he?’ Torabi asked.
Kite winced and said: ‘I have no idea. I only ever met Bijan. The worst of it was that Luc didn’t try to save his children, didn’t do anything to protect Rosamund. As soon as he saw that Abbas had been shot, he panicked and a kind of fight-or-flight impulse kicked in. He ran inside the restaurant. Jacqui saw him go and shouted ‘Daddy!’ and followed him. The baby in the highchair toppled over and was crying on the ground. The other children were screaming. It was awful, the worst thing I’ve ever seen, still to this day. There was blood everywhere, total panic, the realisation that Abbas had been shot, that he was dying right there in front of everyone, and Ali had been kidnapped. It was horrific.’
Torabi sat down on the sofa.
‘What else?’ he said. ‘What else do you remember from that day?’
Kite was concerned that Torabi was holding something back. Did he have access to a better source than Xavier, someone who knew the truth about Eskandarian? He knew that his time was running out. In his long and detailed version of events, this was the natural point at which Eskandarian’s story came to an end.
‘The truth is I’ve never looked back,’ he said. ‘I never wanted to know what they did to your father. It was too painful. Martha and I made a promise never to speak of it. After Luc was arrested, when Xavier and Jacqui had to go through the pain and public embarrassment of seeing their father exposed as a crook, when he was photographed in handcuffs being sent off to prison, well, all we were concerned about was looking after them as friends and giving them the support they needed. Xavier and I spent a lot of time together over the next ten years—’
Torabi interrupted him.
‘He blamed you. He blamed the Americans. He said Bijan and his colleagues knew nothing about the restaurant in Vence. Their plan was to come to the house the next day and kill my father on sight. They weren’t interested in talking to him. They were interested in sending a message.’
Kite knew that Torabi was close to the truth, but not close enough. He relied on the same lies, the same obfuscations that had seen him through the long hours on the ship.
‘When we came home, and later during his time in prison, Luc became obsessed by the idea that the house had been bugged. He found a Gameboy in his office that belonged to me. The screen had been smashed. It was trapped down the back of a chest of drawers in his office.’ It was the first time he had mentioned the Gameboy to Torabi. ‘Luc accused Alain and Hélène of being agents for the CIA who had given them the Nintendo and turned it into a bug, despite the fact that bugs in those days needed a power source, needed to be hooked up to a permanent electric current or they wouldn’t work. Then he wrote a long memoir in prison saying that it was the French authorities who had made him a scapegoat. They didn’t like the fact that Luc had been making money with your father while breaking the sanctions because it was Mitterrand’s cronies who wanted to be filling their boots. You can see how this story has turned into a conspiracy theory over the last thirty years.’
‘You are a good liar, Lachlan Kite. I will give you that.’
Kite shook his head with exaggerated impatience.
‘For
