‘The MOIS?’
‘Iranian intelligence.’ Peele lit a cigarette and rolled a double-five. ‘They know people like us are going to be keeping an eye on people like Eskandarian, sniffing his bottom, going through his underwear drawer. They know that their top business people are vulnerable to approaches from foreign intelligence services. They’ll want to know that Ali’s letters aren’t going to be steamed open, that the only bugs in his bedroom are spiders and flies, not microphones that record every sweet sentence of his pillow talk.’
‘So he’ll be coming to the villa with other people? With bodyguards? His wife?’
‘No wife – not married. Bodyguard possibly. He might send someone in advance. He might travel with a security detail. He may even have these things forced on him by Rafsanjani. At this stage we simply don’t know. My guess is that a few hours before Eskandarian reaches Cannes, various Iranian gentlemen of limited charm will spend several hours checking every orifice of Luc’s villa for things that shouldn’t be there.’
‘What about staff? The Bonnards are bound to have a cook, a maid, all that kind of thing.’
‘Good question.’ Peele took one of Kite’s checkers and placed it on the spine of the board. Kite swore and wondered aloud how the hell Peele kept getting such lucky dice. ‘The same Iranian gentlemen of limited charm will likely want names and dates of birth of everyone who comes regularly to the house, as well as a reassurance that the chef hasn’t been slipped a hundred thousand francs by the DGSI to put mercury in Ali’s oeufs en cocotte.’
‘What’s the DGSI?’ During classes at Alford, Kite had loved Peele’s way with words, but there were times now when he wished he would speak more plainly. Sometimes it was hard extracting a coherent meaning from his former tutor’s flights of rhetorical fancy.
‘I occasionally allow myself to forget how inexperienced you are, Lockie.’ Peele took another checker and laid it alongside the first. ‘The DGSI is Frog liaison. Domestic intelligence. The French equivalent of MI5, of the FBI in America.’
‘So the French government know that Eskandarian is coming to France?’
‘We must assume so, yes.’ Kite groaned as he rolled a one and a two, unable to release his checkers back onto the board. ‘It’s not unusual for wealthy Iranians to holiday in the South of France, but Eskandarian certainly won’t have wanted to advertise the fact in advance. We have reason to believe he’ll be travelling on a French passport because there’s been no visa requirement at the Iranian end. In any event, it hardly matters. Saturation surveillance from the Frogs might work in our favour. Likewise, if the MOIS become concerned that their man is being watched, they’ll think it’s on the orders of Paris or Washington. The last person they’ll suspect of going through Ali’s dustbins is little old you.’
Kite soon lost the game of backgammon, just as he lost four in every five matches they played. Sometimes they would take the board to a pub in the neighbourhood, other times they might set up in an outdoor café on the Heath. It was all part of his training: Eskandarian was known to be a keen backgammon player and being able to challenge him to a decent game would put Kite at a slight social advantage. Every detail had been worked out by BOX 88, right down to the system of signals with which Kite and the team would communicate once he arrived at the villa. In the absence of a pager – the possession of which Kite would never have convincingly been able to explain to Xavier – they were going to have to rely on what Strawson described as ‘Moscow Rules’.
‘We’re going to want to talk to you and you’re going to want to talk to us,’ the American explained over a fillet steak at Wolfe’s, the hamburger restaurant behind Harrods which was his home away from home. ‘There needs to be a way of doing that which doesn’t involve one of us coming to the villa and knocking on your door, or you going outside and using Luc’s car phone to ring the safe house.’
‘Sure,’ Kite replied. ‘So what do I do?’
‘If you need to tell us something, and you can’t find a legitimate reason to go for a run, put an item of red clothing in the window of your bedroom. We’ll be watching the house. We’ll see it. Then write us a note, fold it up, stick it inside a packet of cigarettes. Billy can teach you how to do all this.’ Peele, who was sitting beside Kite working his way through a cheeseburger and a glass of Côtes du Rhône, nodded. ‘Then you have a choice. If you’re stuck at the house and can’t get into Mougins, use the dead-drop site. There’s a small orchard at the bottom of the garden, at least a hundred yards from the terrace, where you can go for a smoke. Leave the cigarette packet on the wall. It forms a boundary with the access road. We can grab it from the other side. Again, you can rehearse all this with Billy.’
‘What if I can get into Mougins to see one of you in person?’
‘Well that would make life slightly easier,’ Peele interjected through a mouthful of chips. ‘We’ll see you leave, someone will follow you into town – or wherever it is you happen to be going – and will make it very obvious to you that they’re one of us.’
‘How will they do that?’
‘You know the FT? Pink, easily spotted. They’ll be carrying one. Depending on who’s around and who may or may not be watching, you can either pass them the packet in broad daylight or do it in brush contact.’
Kite had long since finished his lunch. He found that he rarely ate as
