‘Chris. How are you?’
Years ago, at Alford, Towey had obsessively watched the films of Clint Eastwood, quoting ad nauseam from the Harry Callaghan series to anyone who would listen. Every time Kite saw him, Towey made the same joke. He did so again in response to Kite’s reply.
‘Well, Lachlan, to tell you the truth, I’ve forgotten myself in all this excitement.’
Kite was in a bleak, uncooperative mood, thinking of Martha and Xavier. He didn’t recognise the quote and smiled as best he could, hoping they could skirt around Dirty Harry and Sudden Impact and talk like grown men.
‘It’s good to see you.’
‘You too, mate,’ Towey replied. ‘Christ, doesn’t everybody look so bloody old?’
‘Very.’
‘Age has withered us,’ he said. With dismay, Kite remembered that they had studied Antony and Cleopatra together for A level. Towey was still locked in the classroom, a man of forty-eight stalled for ever in his school days. ‘Custom has staled our infinite variety.’
‘It’s not that bad,’ Kite felt obliged to say, and suddenly wished that he had taken Isobel up on her offer to come with him. ‘People are probably happier now than they were twenty years ago. There’s a lot to be said for not being young. Fewer choices, less pressure. You look great, Chris. How’s married life?’
‘Divorced life nowadays.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
‘Don’t be. I’m bonking like a madman. Best-kept secret in London. If you’re a moderately well-financed middle-aged man with a British passport and some shower gel, the world’s your oyster. Poles, Brazilians, Uzbeks. Some days I can hardly walk.’
‘I’ll bear that in mind.’
‘So what have you been up to lately, eh? Last time I saw you, you were working in Mayfair. Oil or something.’
‘That’s right.’ Shortly after the attacks of 9/11, BOX 88 had been mothballed. Kite had taken a long sabbatical, then worked in the oil business for a small private company financing exploratory research in Africa.
‘Still doing that?’
‘Still doing that,’ Kite replied.
It was a lie, of course. Kite and Jean Lorenzo, his opposite number in the United States, had revived BOX 88 in 2016. In one of his final acts as president, Barack Obama had approved intelligence budgets totalling more than $90 billion, 7 per cent of which was diverted to ‘Overseas Contingency Operations’, a euphemism for BOX 88. Kite was now director of European operations working out of the Agency’s headquarters in Canary Wharf.
‘Tell you who thinks you’re a man of mystery. Remember Bill Begley? Always reckoned you were a spy.’
Kite had lived so long with the triplicate lives of the secret world, never settling down, always packing a bag and moving on, working one day in London, the next in Damascus, that people from time to time had suggested to his face that he was a spy. He had a well-honed response for such occasions which he used on Towey now.
‘I confess,’ he said, raising both hands in mock surrender. ‘Get the cuffs.’
Towey, never the brightest button in the Alford box, looked confused.
‘To be honest, I wish I had gone into that life,’ Kite added. ‘Lot more interesting than the work I’ve been doing the last ten years. But from what I understand, it doesn’t earn you any money. Foreign Office pays peanuts. Are you still in the City?’
Towey confirmed that he was indeed ‘making investments on behalf of private clients’ but was soon drawn into a separate conversation with a married couple whom Kite did not know. He grabbed the chance to leave. As he crossed the aisle, Xavier’s children, Olivier and Brigitte, walked in front of him. Kite had not seen them in years and was staggered by Olivier’s likeness to his father; it was as if the seventeen-year-old Xavier had walked past and failed to recognise him. Nearby, Kite spotted a senior French diplomat talking to a member of the Bonnard family; Kite knew that MI6 had recruited his number two in Brussels as part of the broad intelligence attack on EU officials during the Brexit negotiations. Two pews beyond them, Lena – Xavier’s long-suffering wife, herself a recovering heroin addict – looked at Kite as she sat down. He had written a letter of condolence to her within hours of Martha’s call, but could not tell from her reaction if she had read it. He raised a hand in greeting and Lena nodded back. She looked shattered.
A sudden silence settled on the congregation, punctured by organ music. Kite felt eyes on him. He looked up to find the woman he had seen walking alongside de Paul – still wearing oversized sunglasses and the black overcoat – staring in his direction. Had she recognised him? She sat down and began texting on a mobile phone.
‘Lachlan?’
Xavier’s younger sister, Jacqui, was gesturing at him from some distance away. The woman in the long overcoat removed her sunglasses and briefly looked at Kite a second time. He had never seen her face before – mid-twenties, alert and attractive – and wondered what had become of de Paul.
‘Communing with the tax collector?’ Jacqui asked.
She made her way towards him and they embraced. Kite felt the dampness of tears on her cheek as she kissed him.
‘What’s that?’
‘St Matthew,’ she said. ‘You’re standing underneath his statue. He was a tax collector. And here they are, the Catholic Church selling candles at fifty pence a pop.’
Jacqui indicated a box of candles nearby. She was uncharacteristically wired and jumpy. Kite assumed she was running on Valium and beta blockers.
‘I’m so sorry about Xav,’ he said, aware that there was nothing he could do or say to make the situation any better. ‘Did you get my letter?’
‘I got it,’ she replied. ‘You were very kind to write. Nobody knew Xavier like you did, Lachlan.’
The remark served only to stir up those same feelings of guilt which had dogged Kite since Martha’s phone call. His friend’s suicide had become a set of nails drawing down the blackboard of his conscience; he wished that
