‘Forgive me,’ he said, ‘but what does all this have to do with me? You said you wanted to involve me in an operational capacity?’
‘We do,’ Peele replied. ‘Very much. Strange as it may seem, you’re in the perfect position to be able to help us.’
Kite looked at him. He recalled a dozen different moments from their relationship: the Test match at Lord’s; conversations at Peele’s flat on Alford High Street; history lessons in the classroom beside the racquets courts. All that time, his tutor had been watching him, weighing him up, preparing to throw him into this secret sect. The realisation confirmed something that Kite had believed about himself for as long as he could remember: that he was somehow different to other people, not superior, but separate from the mainstream. He had often felt as though he was standing at the edge of a fast-flowing river watching all of life rushing past. Peele was encouraging him to jump in.
‘It involves your friend Xavier,’ said Rita. ‘It involves your holiday in France.’
Xavier’s name clicked into place like the last few turns of a Rubik’s cube. Kite had known that it was coming. The Iranian. ‘The ayatollah.’ He was the key.
‘The businessman who will be staying with the Bonnard family,’ Rita continued, ‘is a man named Ali Eskandarian. All of our intelligence suggests that he is a prominent individual at the centre of the terrorist network. Either he has the power to facilitate this attack or he has the wherewithal to put a stop to it. We mean to find out. And we need you to help us do that.’
27
The driver continued to point the gun at Cara as she climbed into the back seat of the Skoda. The American reached across and closed the back door.
‘What’s going on?’ Cara asked.
The American did not respond. He smelled of stale tobacco and cheap aftershave. The black woman, who was at least fifty, passed him the gun and drove off along the lane. She did not drive fast. She did not seem anxious or in any way concerned about what had just taken place. It was as if grabbing lone female ramblers on quiet country lanes was something that she did all the time.
‘How did you know my name?’
The American was about thirty-five, obviously military. Lean, tanned, scarred. Strong hands, hair cropped close, pale blue eyes as clear as topaz. Even in her frightened state, Cara was conscious that he was attractive. The car turned onto a muddy track, passed over a cattle grid and came to a halt behind an abandoned farmhouse.
‘We get out here,’ he said.
She knew, without being told, that he was BOX 88. It was the only plausible explanation.
‘Not until you tell me what’s going on.’
The American took a beat before seizing her by the arm. The force of his grip was so overwhelming that Cara cried out as she was dragged across the back seat. He pulled her from the car until she said, ‘OK, OK, I’m coming, let me go.’ After that she walked in front of him towards a barn where two men were hunched over laptops. They did not look up. There was a smell of spilled oil and manure. The woman drove off in the Skoda without a word. The American told Cara to sit down on a hay bale and put the gun on a rusted tank onto which someone had graffitied a smiley face and the words ‘Tanks for the memories’.
‘My name is Jason,’ he said.
‘Good for you.’
‘Your name is Cara Jannaway. You were born in Norwich in 1994. You had a Thai meal delivered to your apartment last night. Stir-fry chicken. You have a brother called Jude, a sister who died when you were six. You’re on Tinder and had a date last week with an actor called Nick. Swipe for long enough and you’ll probably match up with your colleague, Matthew Tomkins. You’ve worked for the Security Service for almost a year. Your boss is Robert Vosse. Yesterday you went to a funeral pretending to be “Emma” and gave your card to a man named Lachlan Kite. Any of this sounding familiar?’
Cara tried not to look as shaken as she felt. Unwittingly a smile appeared on her face as she realised that her hunch had been right: Kite had known she was phoney. He had handed her the card so that BOX 88 could investigate ‘Emma’ as soon as she was dumb enough to ring the number. The rest would have been easy: Tinder, Deliveroo – it was all on her phone. The DG’s whistle-blower had said that BOX had personnel working for them in all the services, on both sides of the Atlantic. Finding out how long she’d been operational would have been as easy as frogmarching her into the barn.
‘Sounds familiar,’ she replied. ‘But leave my sister out of it.’
‘Drink?’ said Jason.
‘What are you offering? Champagne? Lucozade Sport?’
Cara saw the edge of a smile on one of the laptop boys, but Jason remained stony faced.
‘I meant water,’ he said.
‘I know you did, handsome.’
Jason took a step towards her, a warning not to get too smart. Cara felt herself tense up. She knew what sort of man he was. She had met his sort before. Back home in Norwich there had been boys who had left school at sixteen, dealt drugs and broken hearts for a few years, gone to prison for a stretch, joined the army as a last resort. Iraq and Afghanistan had given their lives meaning, handed them a chance to channel their rage. She reckoned Jason was their American doppelganger, signing up after 9/11, tours of duty in Baghdad and Fallujah, now ex-Special Forces on call to solve whatever problems BOX 88 needed solving, violently or otherwise. He dragged a hay bale in front of Cara and kicked it into position. His legs were so strong it was as though the bale was filled with air.
‘Keep
