There was a fourth place laid at the circular table. Kite moved gingerly into his chair, like someone suffering with a bad back. He thought about the TV show Game for a Laugh and looked around the room, searching for hidden microphones and cameras. Perhaps Peele had arranged a surprise party and Xavier and Des were about to appear from a concealed room somewhere in the restaurant. He remembered his mother’s affection for Strawson and briefly speculated that she was going to show up to congratulate him on finishing his exams.
‘Wine?’ Peele asked.
‘Definitely.’
Strawson boomed a hearty laugh. Peele could see that Kite was struggling and had the good grace to look slightly ashamed of himself. As he poured the glass of wine, he endeavoured to explain what was going on.
‘I haven’t been entirely honest with the boys about my life pre-Alford,’ he said. Rita sat down and flapped a napkin into her lap. She was wearing perfume, a smell as rare and as coveted by Alford boys as bottles of vodka and packets of cigarettes. ‘For Royal Marine, read soldier turned spy. Sixteen years ago I was recruited into—’
‘You’re a spy?’ Kite replied. He did not fully understand what this meant – he had an image in his mind of Ian Ogilvy in The Saint – but understood enough to know that what Peele had once been was rare and extraordinarily exciting.
‘Of a sort,’ Peele replied.
‘Are you all spies?’ Kite asked, looking at them in turn.
Strawson remained impassive. Kite remembered the money on the floor in Churchill, the riddle of the light switches, the lamp teetering over the edge of the bath. The whole thing must have been some sort of test. But how was it possible for these people to have arranged for three skinheads to scare the shit out of him on the evening train to Ayr?
‘We’ll get to that,’ said Strawson, appearing to enjoy his own reply.
‘We work for a special alliance of British and American intelligence,’ said Rita. ‘We work for BOX 88.’
‘BOX 88,’ Kite repeated quietly. He thought of phone booths, of Post Office deposit boxes, of the year 1988. He was utterly confused. ‘What is that? I’ve heard of MI5, of MI6, the CIA—’
‘We are all those things,’ said Strawson. ‘And more.’
Peele smiled over the rim of his glass. ‘From time to time the Metropolitan Police have referred to MI5 as BOX 500, to MI6 as BOX 850. We’re something rather different. Nothing to do with 1988, nothing to do with neo-Nazis.’
‘Neo-Nazis?’ Kite asked.
‘The number eighty-eight has been co-opted by certain elements in the far right. Something to do with Heil Hitler, where the number eight stands in for the letter “H”. Never mind.’ He put the glass down. ‘Before we go any further, Lockie, we need to ask you an important question.’
Strawson nodded solidly, prompting Peele to continue.
‘We’re considering the possibility of involving you in an operational capacity. This will require of you a great sacrifice as well as an absolute guarantee that, when you leave this room, you never speak to anyone – not your mother, not Xavier, not anybody – about what has been said here today.’
Why was he bringing up Xavier? Kite gulped his wine and almost lost control of the glass as he put it down on the table.
‘What kind of sacrifice?’ he asked, wondering if they were going to ask him to break the law. He wouldn’t have minded doing so – in fact, the idea of being involved in something illegal was oddly thrilling – but he needed more detail.
Strawson leaned forward. ‘Do we have your guarantee that you will never speak of this, or any subsequent meeting that might take place, ever again?’
Kite felt that he had no choice other than to agree. He looked at Peele, as if his tutor might offer him some much-needed words of advice or encouragement, but realised that nothing was going to happen until he promised to keep his mouth shut.
‘Sure,’ Kite said. ‘Yeah. I won’t tell anyone.’
He meant it. He had the evolving sense that these people were capable of anything. Whatever they were about to tell him, he knew that it was something extraordinary from the world, beyond Alford, a secret much larger than school or Killantringan or drunken parties in London. Kite recalled the feeling of being a small child overhearing the whispered conversations of grown-ups in adjoining rooms.
‘You want to serve your country? You want to protect your fellow citizens, keep them safe in their beds?’
Strawson’s questions unbalanced Kite still further. He could scarcely understand how he could serve his country or protect people from harm in the way that the American had suggested. But again his instinctive response was to agree.
‘Of course. Who wouldn’t?’
‘Excellent!’ Peele exclaimed. ‘So let’s get on with it, shall we?’
Kite saw that he had misjudged him; or, more accurately, had failed to detect the secret Peele was hiding even from those closest to him. He was a teacher and a friend, yes, but he was also plainly a man of violence and lies. Kite understood Strawson to be potentially even more devious, packed with American charm and bonhomie but possessed of an iron will and ruthlessness as plain to see as the squalid perversions which lurked inside Lionel Jones-Lewis. As for Rita, what did he know? That she was a convincing actress. That she smelled of the promise of release from Alford, of future summers with girls. It occurred to Kite that she was the only black woman he had ever spent any length of time with in his eighteen and a half years on the planet.
‘What kind of things would you need me to do?’
‘Good question,’ Strawson replied. But then they had to pause, because two waitresses walked into the room and served the food – a starter of smoked salmon arranged inside neatly cut triangles of crustless brown bread. Only when they had left the room and closed the door behind them
