MR
:
We?
LK
:
Yes. I met somebody. I got married.
[break, 1 second]
MR
:
Right. Yes, I did hear that. On the grapevine. I’m happy for you. Finally settling down. What’s her name? What does she do?
LK
:
She’s a doctor. Isobel.
[break, 2 seconds]
MR
:
And what about everything else? Are you still doing those things you used to do? That life?
LK
:
I’ll tell you when I see you. We can talk about it then.
MR
:
Of course. Silly of me to ask. Must be beautiful there. Lovely England. I never get back …
LK
:
Killed himself
how
?
MR
:
They think an overdose. I didn’t want to pry. Jacqui didn’t go into details. Obviously she was very upset.
LK
:
Yes, of course. Christ …
MR
:
I’m sorry, Lock. I have to go. The kids …
LK
:
Of course. School run? They must be big now.
MR
:
Gigantic. Are you sure you’re OK?
LK
:
I’m fine. I’ll be absolutely fine. You?
MR
:
Yes. Just makes me think of the old days, you know. He was such a lovely man, such a mess. A lost soul.
LK
:
Yes. He was all of those things.
[break, 1 second]
Thank you for telling me, Martha. I really appreciate it. It’s been good to hear your voice, if nothing else.
MR
:
Yours too. I don’t think I’m going to be able to get to the funeral if it’s next week. There’s just too much on here. Jonas is going away, he has work. My au pair just quit …
LK
:
I’m sure the Bonnards will understand. There’ll be lots of people there.
MR
:
Everybody from that time.
LK
:
Yes. Everybody.
The four members of the MI5 team gathered around an IKEA kitchen table in a damp, under-hoovered safe flat in Acton, read the transcript and, later, listened to the recording of the conversation several times. One excerpt in particular – the question Are you still doing those things you used to do? – gave team leader Robert Vosse the shot of operational adrenaline he had been craving ever since his investigation into BOX 88 had begun. Like a detective happening upon the clue that at last placed his suspect at the scene of the crime, Vosse – a big-boned, amiable man of forty-one with outsized features who wore thick-rimmed glasses and clothes from Marks & Spencer – was convinced that Martha Raine had provided concrete evidence that Lachlan Kite was a spy.
‘We’ve been digging into every nook and cranny of Kite’s existence for the past three weeks and come up with precisely sweet Fanny Adams. Nothing recorded against, not even a parking fine or a speeding ticket. A six-person surveillance team – the best of the best – has been following him around like Rain Man waiting for Kite to pop his head into Vauxhall Cross or catch a flight to Langley. Has he done that? Has he bollocks. Here is a man we are told is the operational commander of a secret Anglo-American spy unit that’s been running off the books for almost forty years, but the most Lachlan Kite has done this month is get himself a haircut and book a weekend break to Florence. Now, finally, he takes a phone call. A woman from his past says, “Are you still doing the things you used to do?” What did she mean by that? What else could she possibly have meant other than “Are you still operational as a spy?”’
Vosse was a man who liked to pace around as he spoke. His underlings, all of whom were as mystified by BOX 88 as their boss, variously stared at surveillance photographs of Kite, copies of the GCHQ transcript, half-eaten bars of Chunky Kit-Kat. Their investigation had come about as a result of a private conversation between the director general of MI5 and a disgruntled former MI6 officer who claimed that Kite had been recruited by BOX 88 as a teenager.
‘“Are you still doing those things you used to do?”’ Vosse muttered. ‘What is “that life” if not the life we are investigating? What could this Martha Raine possibly have been referring to if not our man’s thirty-year career as an industrial-strength spy? Drug-pushing? Is that it? Was he secretly a crack dealer? No. Lachlan Kite was running his own little Mission: Impossible unit without any of us knowing.’
‘Allegedly.’
This from Tessa Swinburn, at thirty-nine a contemporary of Vosse, in every way his operational and intellectual equal, who had nevertheless been overlooked for promotion due to fears within Personnel that she would soon become pregnant by her new husband and likely spend at least eighteen of the next thirty-six months on maternity leave.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Vosse asked.
‘It means we still don’t have proof. It means we still have to keep following him around. It means until we can actually catch Lachlan Kite in the act of spying, we can’t do anything about it. We can’t arrest him. We can’t interrogate him. We certainly can’t prove the existence of BOX 88.’
‘How do you catch somebody in the act of spying?’ Vosse asked, a question which, given their vocation and operational remit, took all of the team by surprise. ‘He’s not going to sit on a bench in Gorky Park and share a cigarette with Edward Snowden. We’re not going to film him orchestrating a spy swap on the Glienicke Bridge.’
‘Then why are we here, doing what we’re doing?’ Tessa asked.
‘Because we’re assembling evidence. Following leads. Building a case against a man, bit by bit, step by step.’
‘Exactly,’ said Matt Tomkins.
Tomkins, who always liked to agree with Vosse, had been employed by the Security Service for almost six years. The Kite operation was the first job that had taken him permanently away from Thames House. He was one of only five employees who knew about BOX 88; the DG didn’t want to look like a fool if the investigation proved to be a wild goose chase. Socially withdrawn, but clever and ambitious, Tomkins spent an hour every evening pumping weights at a gym in Hammersmith, another three on weekends throwing people onto crash mats at a ju-jitsu class in Barnes. Though not yet thirty, his hair had already started to recede at the
