‘Not much.’ There was a momentary silence. ‘Rita asked me not to tell them.’
‘I’m assuming you spoke to Vosse last night.’
‘I did,’ Cara replied. ‘Told him there was nobody at the cottage. He still thinks you’re kidnapped.’
Kite put the silver box back on the desk and tapped out an internal message to his assistant: Get me a number for Robert Vosse.
‘What’s the scale of your investigation?’ he asked.
‘Small. Internal. Far as I know, just us and the DG.’
‘Far as you know …’ Kite picked up the box again and opened it. ‘I’m going to have a word with Vosse about shutting your unit down.’
‘OK,’ Cara replied evenly.
‘And I’d like you to hand in your notice.’
Silence on the line, then: ‘My what now?’
Kite smiled. ‘You have a choice, Cara,’ he said. ‘Walk off into the sunset, keep quiet and nobody will ever bother you again. Or meet me in Canary Wharf this evening with Robert Vosse to discuss your future.’
‘Our future where?’
‘At BOX 88.’
There was method to Kite’s madness. Cara’s potential was plain to see: she was young, brave, quick on her feet. As for Vosse, he could join the handful of serving officers inside MI5 who were already active in support of BOX 88. With Vosse’s assistance, Kite intended to find out the identity of the whistle-blower who had tipped off the director general, setting in train the investigation.
‘I’m flattered,’ Cara replied. ‘Thank you. What about Matt and Tessa?’
‘Don’t worry about them.’ If it came to it, BOX 88 had ways of making sure that people like Matt Tomkins and Tessa Swinburn kept their mouths shut. ‘Just go back to work this morning. Charge up my mobile. I’ll call it around midday, that way your team will know I’m back in circulation. When you have the chance to speak privately to Vosse, tell him I want to meet up. He’ll agree.’
‘You sound confident.’
Kite didn’t have the opportunity to reply because Rita had appeared outside his office, knocking on the glass door, gesturing Kite to let her in.
‘I have to go,’ he said.
‘What about your wallet and shoes?’ Cara asked. ‘We found lots of your stuff in a skip at the car park. Suit jacket, keys, your watch.’
‘Bring them tonight.’
64
Everything was resolved as Kite had planned it. With a skill and subtlety that surprised both Kite and Cara, Robert Vosse persuaded the director general of the Security Service that Lachlan Kite was an oil executive working under non-official cover for MI6, that the whistle-blower was a fantasist and the internal investigation into BOX 88 a wild goose chase.
Matt Tomkins, still rattled by the Pavkov murder, gratefully seized the opportunity to join a new MI5 team investigating a Russian money-laundering operation in Manchester. A week before announcing that she was pregnant, Tessa Swinburn was promoted to run a counter terrorism unit inside Thames House, taking Kieran Dean with her. All three filed reports detailing their experiences on the BOX 88 investigation. These were intercepted by Vosse en route to the DG and redrafted to remove what was euphemistically described as ‘unnecessary content’. Any record of the kidnapping of Lachlan Kite, the murder of Zoltan Pavkov and the arrest of Ramin Torabi was wiped from the historical memory.
It remained only to deal with Torabi. Kite had neither the time nor the inclination to spend days interrogating the Iranian in his cell. What he needed to know could be disinterred by colleagues, all of whom would leap at the chance to work Torabi over. There was no belief in torture at BOX 88, only in a forensic study of intelligence and the steady accumulation of facts. If it took weeks for Torabi to break, so be it. Kite would wait. If he was ready to spill his guts, so much the better. Either way, his life as he had known it was over.
Kite had made a comprehensive list of subjects on which to question Torabi – How had he known the location of the cottage? Why had Torabi referred to Cosmo de Paul as an ‘associate’ of Kite’s? Was he responsible for the death of Xavier Bonnard? – and discussed them at length with the interrogation team. As they embarked on several days of initial questioning, Torabi began to show signs of depression. The humiliating failure of his operation had settled on him. He spoke constantly about Kite’s promise to take him to Marble Arch and demanded to know when he would be released so that his wife could be reassured that he was safe from harm.
‘Pity you didn’t extend the same courtesy to me,’ Kite muttered, watching the interrogation on a live feed.
On the subject of Xavier’s murder, Torabi pleaded innocence. A technical analysis of the Iranian’s movements in the days leading up to his death, coupled with a report obtained from a BOX 88 source in French intelligence, persuaded Kite that Torabi had indeed left Paris two days before Xavier had taken his own life. It was scant consolation: to imagine his oldest friend in a suicidal despair, alone and broken in a Paris apartment, was hard to take. Kite knew that there was nothing he could have done to help Xavier in his hour of need, just as he had been unable to help him in any meaningful way throughout their twenties and thirties. He had long believed that it had been right and just to put Luc Bonnard behind bars. Nevertheless, he shared the widespread view that Luc’s disgrace, the public exposure of his crimes and venality, had accelerated Xavier’s descent into addiction. In this respect, Kite bore partial responsibility for the way that his friend’s life had turned out. He had betrayed him in France. There was no getting away from it.
Ten days after his release from captivity, Kite finally paid a visit to the gallerist in Mayfair who had obtained the painting by Jean-Paul Riopelle which he had intended to view on the afternoon of Xavier’s funeral. Ever since he had bought a small brush and
