‘Does the name Abolghasem Mesbahi mean anything to you?’
Kite was possessed of an extraordinary facility for deceit, honed over three decades in the secret world. If something was black, he could persuade a person that it was white; if it was round, he could convince them it was flat. He lied with every instrument at his disposal: his movements and gestures, his words and actions. It was therefore very easy for him to deny ever having heard the name Abolghasem Mesbahi when he knew very well that he had been a senior Iranian intelligence officer who had defected to the West in 1996.
‘I’ve never heard of him. It means nothing to me.’
‘And Ahmed Jibril?’ Torabi asked. ‘Do you know this person?’
Again, Kite knew the name very well. Jibril was a former Syrian army captain and erstwhile leader of the PFLP-GC, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. He had led one of the many terrorist groups blamed for the bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie in December 1988. His name had also been linked to Ali Eskandarian.
‘Do I know him?’ Kite replied. ‘No, I don’t know him. Friend of yours?’
‘I take it you have heard of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi?’
That one was too obvious to lie about. Anyone with a passing knowledge of current affairs in the last thirty years knew the identity of the Libyan intelligence officer who had been convicted by a Scottish court of planting the Lockerbie bomb.
‘Yes, of course I’ve heard of al-Megrahi. Why are you asking me about Lockerbie? Surely that’s ancient history?’
It hadn’t been ancient history in 1989. Eskandarian had been suspected of being a key player in the plot to bring down Pan Am 103, an American airliner which had blown up over the Scottish town of Lockerbie, killing 11 people on the ground and all 259 passengers and crew. But why was Torabi digging it up now, more than thirty years later?
‘Tell me this. When Ali Eskandarian arrived at the house in France, had you been told by MI6 of his links to the PFLP?’
Torabi was reading names and dates from the sheet of paper, asking Kite questions around which he could duck and weave with the ease of a boxer evading telegraphed punches.
‘That’s one of the strangest questions I’ve ever been asked. I feel like it’s almost a waste of time denying it. You obviously don’t believe that I wasn’t working for MI6.’ Hossein was standing beside Kite and stepped into his eyeline. ‘Of course I didn’t know Ali Eskandarian was in the PLO – or whatever it is you just referred to. Do you think my mother would have let me go on holiday with a Palestinian terrorist?’
Torabi nodded at Hossein, who immediately struck Kite hard across the jaw, catching him a second time on the opposite side of his face as he recovered from the first blow. Too disorientated to speak, Kite instinctively tried to raise his hands to protect himself but felt the wire biting deep towards the bones of his wrists.
‘Enough lies,’ Torabi snapped. ‘What did William Peele tell you about Eskandarian’s relationship with the CIA? Did you know that he became friends with Luc Bonnard in Paris in the 1970s?’
Kite was appalled that Xavier had given up Billy Peele. Somehow he had to stick to his story, but could no longer be sure of how much, or how little, Xavier had told him.
‘You think Billy Peele was involved? My fucking history teacher who was on holiday in France? Are you serious? That’s Xavier’s cocaine-induced conspiracy theory. He blamed him for everything, just like his dad blamed the Yanks. Peele was on holiday in the same town as us. Xavier took so much coke in the next fifteen years he convinced himself that one of his old teachers from Alford was watching the house for MI6! Pure paranoia. Now he’s thrown me into the mix as well, from the silence of the grave. It’s total horseshit.’ Torabi glanced quickly at Hossein, as if he was in danger of losing face in front of the prisoner. ‘Yes, it’s true that Luc and Eskandarian became friends in Paris when they were both living there in the seventies. So what? If you want to know what the CIA knew about Eskandarian’s links to the PLO, ask the fucking CIA! How should I know? I was eighteen years old. When I wasn’t stoned, I was drunk. When I wasn’t drunk, I was trying to sleep with girls.’
Christ, he thought suddenly. Martha. Had they gone for her as well?
‘Not the PLO,’ said Torabi, catching Kite’s deliberate mistake. ‘The PLFP. You know very well that in 1988, an Iranian civilian airliner was shot down by the USS Vincennes, an American aircraft carrier operational in the Gulf. All two hundred and ninety people on board, including sixty-six children, were killed. You know very well that according to the confession of Abolghasem Mesbahi, in retaliation for this act of terror the Iranian government of the late Ayatollah Khomeini engaged Ahmed Jibril, a Syrian terrorist, to target an American airliner carrying at least the same number of innocent civilians. You know that with the assistance of his comrades in the PFLP, including Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, Jibril successfully brought down Pan Am 103 by smuggling onboard a barometric pressure device, hidden inside a cassette recorder, which exploded over Lockerbie.’
‘Do I know that, Ramin? Do I? You make a habit of assuming a hell of a lot about what I know and don’t know, about who I am and who I used to be. I was working at my mother’s hotel in Scotland when the plane exploded over Lockerbie. If the bomb had gone off ten minutes later, it would likely have come down over my home town. That’s the extent of my memory of what happened. I had no idea Eskandarian was suspected of involvement in the plot until you just brought it up. The last time I thought
