Isobel made a conscious decision to think like this. Doing so was the one way she could help Kite and preserve her own peace of mind. Taking this approach was the best protection for her child.
It was a version of prayer.
30
By the middle of July, Killantringan had been packed up and sold off, leaving Kite effectively homeless. Rather than go to Sligo to stay with his extended family, he moved into a BOX 88 safe flat in Hampstead, telling his mother that he was staying with friends, telling friends that he was staying with his mother. Over the course of the next three weeks, Peele taught Kite how to clear a dead letterbox, how to discern if he was under surveillance and how to carry out a brush contact in a crowded place. All these were elements of tradecraft which, Kite was assured, would likely serve no useful purpose in France. Nevertheless, it was important for him to familiarise himself with the basic principles of espionage so that they became second nature to him, ‘like throwing a rugby ball or riding a bike’ as Peele put it. In his former teacher’s assessment, there was a ‘negligible chance’ that Kite would be placed under surveillance during the operation. After all, he was Xavier’s best friend, not a stranger to the family who had wandered in off the street. If the French or the Iranians were on the lookout for trouble, their lenses would be trained on Ali Eskandarian, not on Lachlan Kite. That was the beauty of it: Kite was going to be hiding in plain sight, reporting on everything going on at the villa, and all the while keeping up the pretence of being a diffident eighteen-year-old school leaver with nothing on his mind but lying by the pool with a Milan Kundera, drinking beer and working on his suntan.
So much of what Peele taught him was, initially at least, confusing to the eighteen-year-old Kite. He had known that France, like the UK and a great many other countries, had highly sophisticated intelligence services capable of everything from surveillance to state-sponsored assassinations. Yet prior to his training, his knowledge of the secret world had extended to a handful of Ian Fleming novels and a rental of Defence of the Realm from the video shop in Stranraer. Kite had never seen the television adaptations of Smiley’s People and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. He was too young to remember the public unmasking and subsequent reputational disgrace of Sir Anthony Blunt. He had seen spy movies in which people unscrewed the handsets of telephones and dropped bugs into the mouthpiece, watched Bond films in which Roger Moore or Timothy Dalton were strapped to chairs and interrogated under bright white lights. Such incidents belonged to a different world, a dimension of fantasy bearing little resemblance to the experience of learning at Peele’s knee and accumulating knowledge on the workings of BOX 88.
On the first day at the Hampstead flat, for example, Kite was instructed to memorise the names of every metro station on the New York subway in case they appeared as targets for attacks on a document at the villa or were mentioned during conversation. A memo from Strawson suggested that Kite should also familiarise himself with the city’s history and culture, on the basis that a codename for the alleged plot might make reference to some aspect of New York life of which Kite was unaware. Peele duly drew up a list of names and places – from DAKOTA to LIBERTY, from IDLEWILD to ROCKEFELLER – covering four sheets of A4 paper, front and back. He did the same for chemical and biological weapons, telling Kite to listen out and look for certain keywords – among them BIOPREPARAT, FERMENT, EKOLOGY – as well as scientific terms – ATROPINE, PRALIDOXIME, SARIN – which reminded Kite of sitting his chemistry O level.
Peele spent many hours explaining to Kite precisely how he was going to help once he reached Mougins. BOX 88 needed as much information on Eskandarian as possible. That meant Kite reporting on any visitors to the house and providing detailed accounts of the Iranian’s conversations and general behaviour. He was to befriend Eskandarian and earn his trust. Prior to Kite’s arrival, a team of Falcons would arrange for the villa to be bugged, but he would be taking equipment of his own and would be required to assist the Falcons if anything went wrong with their technology. BOX 88 had rented a property several hundred metres from the Bonnard villa which was to be used as a listening post; that is to say, as a location from which agency personnel could run the operation against Eskandarian. Every morning – or whenever he felt it necessary to file a report – Kite would put on his running gear, jog round to the safe house and knock on the door. A member of the BOX 88 team would be there to receive him.
‘Xav doesn’t really think of me as a jogger,’ Kite had pointed out when the plan was first mooted. ‘Isn’t he going to find it a bit weird?’
They were sitting in the Hampstead safe flat playing backgammon. Peele brushed his concerns away.
‘You used to go for runs at Alford, yes?’
‘Yes, sir.’ Kite still occasionally referred to his former schoolmaster as ‘Sir’, a habit which he would quickly grow out of as the summer progressed. ‘I mean, yes. But only in the rugby season. In the winter.’
‘So start going for runs again. Let Xavier know you’ve been keeping yourself fit over the summer. You want to play rugby at university, you enjoy the feeling of being in good shape.’
‘Why don’t you just bug the Bonnards’ house and record everything Eskandarian says? Why do you even need me?’
‘Because it’s not just what Eskandarian says that’s of interest to us. It’s how he behaves, how he treats people, who he meets, what he conceals. Besides, the property will likely be swept
