Why now? Why come for him thirty years after the events in France? The British had played no role in the assassination of Qasem Soleimani; it was implausible that the Quds Force were embarked on revenge. Kite could only assume that word of the ongoing backchannel negotiations between BOX 88 and the Iranian leadership had leaked to elements in MOIS, Iran’s intelligence service. Personnel from the United States had been secretly meeting senior government ministers from Tehran at a hotel in Dubai without the knowledge or approval of the White House. Perhaps Fariba assumed, incorrectly, that Kite was a member of the negotiating team? But why the specific interest in Eskandarian? Was there a mole inside BOX 88 with access to the file from 1989? Perhaps Fariba’s interest was just a bluff, an opening move in a much longer game of interrogation. It was impossible to know.
Lying back against the flat, hard pillow, Kite remembered the woman outside the Brompton Oratory and the glimpse of the Vauxhall Astra tailing his Jaguar from Kensington. It was a slim ray of hope. If ‘Emma’ had been part of a larger surveillance team, it was possible that several vehicles had followed him onto Hyde Park Corner. If the Jaguar had been sighted on the ramp leading down to the car park, there was a chance that Kite’s absence had been noted. Unless he could somehow fashion an escape, his odds of survival depended on who had been following him. If Emma was private sector, he was out of luck. She would go back to her office, write up a report on Kite’s disappearance and head home for pizza and Netflix. If, on the other hand, she was MI5, Thames House had both the experience and the resources to probe more deeply into what had happened. Access to CCTV, number plate recognition cameras and cell phone activity might lead to a rescue attempt. Kite acknowledged the irony: BOX 88 had survived undetected for decades. That the Security Service might come to Kite’s aid in his hour of need would be a welcome, if awkward slice of good fortune.
Yet he could not rely on outside intervention. The Iranian team that had grabbed him were thorough and professional, gaining control of the car park, likely making the switch in dead ground and transporting him, apparently without interference, to a safe house prison which was under their command. Kite considered his options for buying time. That he would deny he was a serving intelligence officer was a given: it was the golden rule Strawson had drummed into him at the age of eighteen. Never confess, never break cover, never admit to being a spy. Xavier may have told Fariba that Kite was MI6, but Kite would insist that he had stopped working for British intelligence many years earlier. They had the wrong man. They had made a mistake. I remember nothing about Ali Eskandarian. Let me go.
Kite rolled onto his side and stared out into the room. There were other tricks he could employ, though it would be risky to do so against trained MOIS personnel. He could complain of suffering from high blood pressure or diabetes and insist that medication be brought to him. He could feign psychological breakdown. Sticking to his cover as an oil executive, Kite could tell Fariba that he was insured against kidnapping and offer a release fee of several million dollars. But he doubted that such an approach would work. There had been something targeted and specific in Fariba’s behaviour. It was obvious that he wanted information, not money.
The noise of a key turning in the lock. The door opened. Kite sat up to find the chauffeur pointing a gun at him. To his satisfaction, he saw that he had developed a black eye the colour of a ripe aubergine, the stain spreading across the bridge of his nose. In his left hand the driver was holding a clear plastic bag containing three aluminium boxes.
‘Eat,’ he said, placing the boxes on the table.
The chauffeur turned to leave. He had a look on his face of distilled contempt.
‘Any chance of a knife and fork?’ Kite asked with an edge of sarcasm.
‘Fuck you,’ he replied.
‘I thought you didn’t speak English?’
Kite smiled as the driver slammed the door. There was a portion of boiled rice in the first box, some moussaka and several cubes of grilled chicken. Kite ate the chicken, waited for the rice and moussaka to cool, then scooped them into his mouth using his fingers. He wiped his hands on the tails of his shirt and lay back on the bed, wondering about Isobel. She was not a person prone to panic or anxiety, but he did not like the idea of her worrying about him while she was pregnant. He entertained the foolish idea that Fariba would listen to what he had to say, thank him for his time and let him go, but it was a forlorn hope.
The key turned again in the lock and the door opened. A well-built man in his thirties whom Kite did not recognise came into the room. He had a thick beard with no sideburns and addressed him in heavily accented English.
‘Come with me.’
The man was dressed in a similar fashion to the goons Kite remembered from the ramp: dark trousers, white shirt, black shoes. As Kite stood up, he was sure that he saw a trace of cocaine in the base of the man’s nostril: a tiny fleck of white powder caught in a damp nest of hairs. The man did not meet Kite’s eye, nor try to bind his hands or prepare himself in any way for the possibility of an escape attempt. Instead he turned his back on the prisoner, leading him down a narrow,
