‘If the men say so,’ Tessa sighed.
She looked out onto Acton High Street. She had always been suspicious that the MI6 whistle-blower was a fantasist. It seemed implausible that BOX had existed for almost four decades without anyone knowing. Who was paying their bills, for a start? Where was it based? Was it a rogue unit or – as the DG feared – an arm of the Deep State operating with the tacit approval of Washington and Downing Street? The one-bedroom flat was situated two floors above a dry-cleaner’s. Tessa could see a clump of teenagers in school uniform on the top deck of a bus. They were gathered around the screen of a mobile phone in a way that made her think of families in pre-war London huddled in front of the wireless listening to speeches by Neville Chamberlain. She looked at her watch. It wasn’t even two o’clock. Why weren’t they in school?
‘So here’s what we’re going to do,’ Vosse announced. ‘Matt, you’re going to find out everything you can about this Martha Felicity Raine. Sounds posh. What’s a nice, well-brought-up English girl doing in New York, besides marrying a Yank called Jonas and walking her kids to school? Are they Kite’s kids? What does she do for a living? Housewife? Art dealer? Spy? How does she know our man? How far back does their relationship go? Sounded to me like she was pining for the old days, jealous of Dr Isobel and our man’s comfortable life in Sussex.’
Tomkins nodded, agreeing, writing everything down.
‘Tess,’ Vosse continued, pivoting towards Tessa Swinburn. ‘If you can tear yourself away from gazing at the splendours of Acton High Street, spend the rest of the afternoon on the corpse. Get onto Paris. Get the coroner’s report. Overdose or foul play? Furthermore: who, what, when, why and where is “Lena”? If she owns a house in Onslow Square, that says money to me, lots and lots of money. Any link to Kite? Also “Jacqui”. Who she? Sounds like a relative of the poor bloke who topped himself. What’s she doing in Singapore? I want the whole Bonnard family tree, dead and alive. I want detail. Don’t give me a trunk and a couple of branches. I want it to look like one of those big healthy sycamores you see in ads for health insurance. Massive. Now what’s left?’
Vosse briefly consulted the transcript. He had long, thick fingers and tufts of black hair on the backs of his hands.
‘Funeral,’ came a voice.
Cara Jannaway was standing in the doorway to the kitchen. She was twenty-six and new to MI5 and already unremittingly bored by the job. Hadn’t anticipated the sheer mundanity of keeping tabs on the same target, day after day, moving rumours around a room, mousing files on a computer, lying to her friends about working at the Ministry of Defence, telling boys on Tinder and Bumble she was a chef, a make-up artist, a personal trainer.
‘What’s that?’ said Vosse.
‘Somebody should keep an eye on ATLANTIC BIRD at the funeral. See who he talks to.’ ATLANTIC BIRD was Kite’s operational codename, typically shortened to BIRD. ‘Maybe Martha will find a new au pair and fly over from New York. Maybe I could talk to her, find out what she meant.’
‘Meant by what?’ said Tessa. She was still looking out of the window and only half paying attention.
‘Are you still doing those things you used to do?’ Cara replied. ‘What did she mean by that? What does she know about Kite’s past that she could tell us?’
Vosse looked up. He had found a true believer. There was a smudge on one of the lenses of his thick-rimmed spectacles.
‘You got a black dress, Miss Jannaway?’
‘Sure.’
‘Pair of sunglasses?’
‘Lots.’
‘Good. Then dust them down, pick out a pair of heels.’ He examined a tea towel of dubious hygiene and laid it out on the windowsill. ‘It’s your lucky day, Cara. No office drudgery for you. You’re going to a funeral.’
2
Lachlan Kite woke at sunrise, crept out of bed, changed into a pair of shorts and running shoes and set out on a four-mile loop around the hills encircling the cottage in Sussex. The news of Xavier’s death had hit him as hard as anything he could recall since the sudden loss of Michael Strawson, his mentor and father figure, to a cancer of the liver which had ripped through him in the space of a few months. Though he had seen Xavier only fitfully over the previous ten years, Kite felt a personal sense of responsibility for his death which was as inescapable as it was illogical and undeserved. Usually, pounding the paths around the cottage, feeling the soft winter ground beneath his feet, he could switch the world off and gain respite from whatever problems or challenges might face him upon his return. Kite had run throughout his adult life – in Voronezh and Houston, in Edinburgh and Shanghai – for just this reason: not simply to stay fit and to burn off the pasta and the pints, but for his own peace of mind, his psychological well-being.
It was different today, just as it had been on the afternoon of Martha’s call when Kite had immediately left the cottage and run for seven unbroken miles, memories of Xavier erupting with every passing stride. The stillness of the morning was the stillness of dawn at the Bonnard villa in France, thirty years earlier, the eighteen-year-old Kite sneaking back to bed after a stolen night with Martha to find Xavier passed out in his room, a bottle of Smirnoff tipped over beside him, a cigarette burned down to the filter in his hand. The rising sun was a memory of Ali Eskandarian smoking a Cuban cigar in the gardens of the house, laughing uproariously as Xavier lost to him once again at backgammon. The pain in Kite’s lungs was Strawson and Billy Peele in the safe house in
